


Stormhangar

by KoiLungfish



Category: The Transformers (Cartoon Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-09
Updated: 2017-09-22
Packaged: 2018-12-25 17:58:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 40,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12041199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KoiLungfish/pseuds/KoiLungfish
Summary: Starscream is replaced as Air Commander.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Title: The Banner of the Landwaster: Stormhangar v.1 - Prologue  
> Author: Koi Lungfish  
> Disclaimer: Based on characters and situations from The Transformers [(c) 1986 Hasbro, Ltd]. Used without permission. Text (c) 2003-2010, Koi Lung Fish [Mark of Lung. All Rights Reserved.]  
> Continuity: G1 cartoon, Season 1, immediately following Countdown to Extinction.  
> Feedback always welcome.

 

**Prologue**

_No space of earth shall sunder our two hates:  
I'll haunt thee like a wicked conscience still_  
  
---  
  
Shakespeare, _Troilus and Cressida_  
  
 

" _You can't do this to me!_ "

Starscream's enraged shriek sliced like lightning through the clouds of tension that enclosed the pure blue sky. Megatron punched the Seeker in the face, sending him tumbling backwards towards the horizon.

"I already have!" the tyrant roared. "Now get out of my sight, before I change my mind and smelt you instead!"

Starscream hesitated; they hung high in his sky kingdom, where he was the all-conqueror and Megatron an inferior warrior, but the flight from Cybertron had drained his fuel reserves. Indecision, liquid as mercury, trickled through the hands of time, then the weight of ancient anger broke those fickle fingers.

Parting shots exchanged: from the tyrant, a flung spear of violent lightning that roared like approaching thunder, missing by neither mercy nor design; from the prince, a down-cast gauntlet still clasping a scourge of words.

"You'll never replace me, Megatron! _Never!_ "

Then, quicksilver as his temper, limbs quickened into silver swiftness; Starscream transformed from prince to pariah, and fled into exile.

 _He has gone too far this time,_ Megatron thought, and such thoughts darkened the sky, clasping the sun in a mask of bloody glass, wracking him with all the fire and fury of solar flares that arc to mark the star-struck darkness, dividing the shaded world into blackness and red frenzy. The midday sky gave way to an eventide of apocalyptic wrath-red, and the faintest hints of cloud were as palls of smoke from nations burning below. _His reckless abuse of the exponential generator has lost us a great power source; one that could have relieved our energon famine and brought us a step closer to ultimate victory! Oh, he has overstepped the mark before but now he has hurtled over it like a comet!_

 _He would have left us all to destruction for his own glory, and abandoned good warriors to an ignominious death! He did not even have the courage to communicate with them long enough to sue them for obedience - no, not even long enough to_ gloat _!_

With a roar of frustration, Megatron hurled his spear of wrath deep into the azure breast of the sky, as if he could wound it for embracing the exile, and howled in rage as it blew him back with cold tidings of change and coming storm.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 **Glossary** :

 **Aeraithosensorium** : (From Greek _aer_ 'air' + Greek _aitho_ 'shine/burn' [root of _ether_ ] + Latin _sens_ sense) The sensory apparatus attuned to the electromagnetic spectrum, i.e. radio waves, microwaves, visible light, radiant heat, etc; ergo, **aeraithosensor** a sensor attuned to this medium; **aeraithocom** the Cybertronian equivalent of radio communication bands; **aeraithium** the sensory medium.

 **Astroquart** : One-quarter of an astrolitre.

 **Chandelle** : (from French, meaning 'candle') Of aircraft manoeuvres: a steep climbing turn executed to gain height whilst changing direction of flight.

 **Clagged** : Clogged, coated.

 **Costal** : (from Latin via French, _costa_ 'rib') Of or relating to the ribs.

 **Buccal** : (from Latin, _bucca_ 'cheek') Of or relating to the cheek.

 **Despecere** : (from Latin _de_ privative or reversing prefix + Latin _specere_ 'to look at'). Electromagnetic systems designed to prevent enemy tracking or missile threats from gaining a signal lock. Cybertronian ECM [electronic countermeasures].

 **Eid** : (German) 'Oath'.

 **Flank** : (Old English, from Old French _flanc_ ) The part of the body between the ribs and the hip.

 **Glossa** : (From Greek, _glossa_ 'tongue') Air-borne-particle sensor array located in a position analogous to the human tongue.

 **Immelman** : (From Max Immelmann, German fighter pilot) Of aircraft manoeuvres: a half-loop followed by a half-roll, executed to gain height whilst reversing direction of flight.

 **Pedes** : (From Latin _pes_ , 'foot') Supporting structure attached to the lower leg of a Cybertronian correspondent in location and function to the human foot but being very differently jointed.

 **Picoforge** : A component that manufactures pictrons.

 **Picotrons** : (From 'pico' (from Spanish, _pico_ 'little bit', denoting a factor of 10 to the power of negative twelve) + 'tron' (from _[elec]tron_ , denoting a subatomic particle or particle accelerator)) Cybertronian nanites.

 **Proptovene** : (From Latin _prae_ , 'before' + Greek _optos_ , 'seen' + Latin _venie_ , 'come') Armour to cover the optic sensors, analogous to the human eyelid.

 **Quint** : (From Latin _quintus_ 'five') A group of five Cybertronians given life together, i.e. the Aerialbots. Not necessarily a gestalt group. Not quintuplets in the sense that Sunstreaker and Sideswipe are twins.

 **Strategitorium** : Tactical planning chamber.

 **Superoptic** : (From Latin _super_ 'over' + Greek _optos_ , 'seen') Of the ridges above the optic sensors; in a position analogous to the human eyebrow.

 **Telamones** : (From Latin via Greek, _Telamon_ , name of mythical hero) Male figure used as pillar to support upper structure.

 **Tergiversar I** : (From 'tergiversate' (from Latin _tergiversari, tergum_ 'back' + _vertere_ 'to turn')) To make conflicting statements, to change ones loyalties, or to be apostate.

 **Trine** : (From Latin _trinus_ 'threefold') A group of three Cybertronians given life together, i.e. the Insecticons. Not necessarily a gestalt group. Not triplets in the sense that Sunstreaker and Sideswipe are twins.

 **Vetus** : (From Latin _vetus_ 'old') Elite group of veteran Seekers, forming a core of hardened shock-troops.

  
**Directions:**

Austral: Towards the negative magnetic pole. South on Earth.

Boreal: Towards the positive magnetic pole. North on Earth.

Eqeual: Midway between austral and boreal poles.

Medial: The centre-point of any given region.

Oriensal: Towards the direction of a planet's rotation [towards the rising sun]. East on Earth, west on Cybertron.

Occidensal: Against the direction of a planet's rotation [towards the setting sun]. West on Earth, east on Cybertron.

  
**Time Units:**

Decicycle - one Cybertronian second (0.498 Earth seconds).

Megacycle - one Cybertronian hour (eighty-three Earth minutes).

Terracycle - one rotation of Earth, ergo one Earth day (twenty-four Earth hours).

Astrocycle - one rotation of Cybertron, ergo one Cybertronian day (one hundred and thirty-eight Earth hours or five Earth days, eighteen Earth hours).

Quintun - Cybertronian "week": five Cybertronian days (twenty-four Earth days).

Diun - Cybertronian "month": twenty-five Cybertronian days (one hundred and twenty-one Earth days).

Vorn - The length of time taken for Cybertron's day-night cycle and solar orbit to synchronise: ten Cybertronian years or eighty-three Earth years.

Decavorn - Cybertronian century: one hundred Cybertronian years or eight hundred and thirty-three Earth years.

Kilovorn - Cybertronian millennium: one thousand Cybertronian years or eight thousand three hundred and thirty-three Earth years.

Decilivorn - Cybertronian time unit: ten thousand Cybertronian years or eighty-three thousand three hundred and thirty-three Earth years.

Hekavorn - Cybertronian time unit: one hundred thousand Cybertronian years or eight hundred and thirty-three thousand three hundred and thirty-three Earth years.

Megavorn - Cybertronian time-unit: one million Cybertronian years or eight million, three hundred and thirty-three thousand three hundred and thirty-three Earth years.


	2. The Coming of Fresh Air

 

**The Coming of Fresh Air**

_How art thou fallen from Heaven,  
O Lucifer, son of the morning_  
  
---  
  
Isaiah, _ch. 14 v. 12_  
  
 

Deep in the cold gashes that wound the bed of the ocean, the Decepticon base lay like a thorn in some fold of the flesh of a vast beast, which dimly if at all perceives the beginning of the bleeding that leads to death. Chill lights from slender towers lit the beds of weed and coral that accrued about the alien metal; gardens of sea-fronds warped by Cybertronian chemicals, patrolled by strange sentinels wrought in the likeness of the most bizarre of the sea's secret children. In the life of the darkest waters, the Decepticons found a kinship with the hungriest and ugliest of the hunters. Therein they saw beauty, in their cunning and their refinement as instruments of destruction: in the bared translucent fang, in the vast gape, in the cunning lure, and most of all in the form of life extinguished in a swift strike.

Megatron stood in the command chamber of the Decepticon HQ, glowering at the sea-gardens that had grown unbidden around the waste vents of the base. When the vents were constructed, to pump out the toxic gases and by-products of their industry, none had realised that the persistent organic life of Earth's oceans would accept their discards as a bounty and colonise the alien colony. Megatron had not studied the sea-life of Earth, and did not know whether the tall white stacks of tubular worms were natural or the by-product of Decepticon artifice, or whether the myriads of exoskeletal life that sifted the sands between the vermian towers were native or a freakish bloom, nor did he care.

He gazed upon the sea-life and hated it for flourishing, when every step that his Decepticons took forwards saw the ground crumble beneath them, and uncertainty tainted all his plans. The sea dared to raise bright stone-plants in his domain, when he could not impose his will upon the defiant spirit of one Seeker.

A faint curve tainted his mouth at that thought, similar to a smile in the way that the bare-fanged snarl of the lion is like a friendly greeting. His crystal optics burned with hate for his own face, wrought in the likeness of organics, and he would have torn it asunder had he not needed it. His smile was a bitter sneer, an acknowledgement of the cosmic humour, the irony that the Decepticon least loyal to him and most dangerous to his life was the hardest of them all to replace.

Megatron could think of no-one to take Starscream's post. He could not give the position to Skywarp, the loyal warrior who could never question his leader, nor would he give it to Thundercracker, whose doubts lay with the cause and not the causer. One lacked the wit, the other the will, and there was no other on Earth. One choice remained, though it was foul to him, for it bespoke permanence: that the whip-mark of words Starscream had lashed across the face of his pride should sting forever raw!

"Soundwave," he called, alerting the most patient of his three telamones. "Contact Cybertron. I want a list of all officers suitable to take Starscream's place."

Black as bile ran Megatron's thoughts; old was the hatred between himself and the Air Commander, and deep were the wounds, but the scar tissue knit them close, and broken bones of fractured friendship still held up the respect of rivals, and upon the withered shoulders of crippled comradeship rested a burden of memory. Older than mountains was their enmity, and older than the foundations of mountains was their kinship. Seeds of regret, borne on tides of emotion as his rage ebbed and his reason flowed, settled in his mind, to bloom like corals into twisted horns of dilemma. Now the thorn was removed from his side, Megatron found the wound grew no less deep, and that bleeding also hurt.

"Ultimate weapon ready for calibration testing," Soundwave intoned.

The sea ran red with blood.

Megatron pulled his hand from the fresh dent in the wall, and once again regretted his temper; all that he made in a year, his anger could unmake in a moment, and now six hekavorns of patient work might be lost for a minute of wrath.

_Blast it! Now I will have to get Starscream back somehow, and soon. The longer the weapon control test-rig remains assembled, the more likely the Autobots are to realise that those parts shipments aren't the basic supply runs they appear to be!_

Striving to bank his temper's embers for loosing later upon better targets, Megatron replied, "The ultimate weapon will have to be put on hold. We cannot change Seekers now; things have gone too far. It must be Starscream, or we abandon the project entirely, and that is out of the question."

_Blast you, Starscream, wherever you are!_

 

* * *

 

The blue skies dimmed with storm-edge whiteness. Ragged streamers of cloud-lace fluttered abandoned in the breezes, dappling the skies so that their shadows made Starscream's bright metal flash, as if the Sun blinked to see such speed.

He fled from Megatron at high throttle, burning fear for fuel and anger for energy, and didn't slow below the speed of sound until he was deep in the red desert, where the skies were high and open, and he could see any pursuer that might come. Then, in the heat of the midday, he found a thermal great enough to carry him high up for little fuel; now he gave thought to the energon he had wasted in his too-swift flight, but did not heed the bite of emptiness in his deep tanks. He was familiar with such hungers, the famine of flight between the stars, and could ignore it until his senses began to dim.

He glided upon wings that reflected the Sun like mirrors, as he himself reflected Megatron's bright anger in his own seething, burning spite.

_Replace me! He couldn't replace me if he tried!_

To the skies he cried, " _Who_ could replace me?" and to the earth he asked, "Who could replace _me?_ "

There was no reply. Earth was a silent planet, one of millions. In all his voyages through the outer darkness, to worlds dead and worlds teeming with life of every stripe, he had never again found a planet like Cybertron. Only his homeworld spoke; a constant rumble, deep in the radio, deep in the static, a low slow murmur of ancient essence across every spectrum. The voice of Cybertron exhaled electromagnetic breath that touched the core of every native of the world; the sleeping murmurs of Primus resonated on every armoured exostructure.

Earth was silent: an uncaring, soulless ball of mud, and Starscream soared over it with the first intimations of the loneliness of exile.

 

* * *

 

When Soundwave returned with the list of prospective promotees, Megatron still stood gazing at the open sand around the Decepticon base. He seemed not to have moved in the long megacycles it had taken Soundwave to extract from Shockwave the information required. The communications officer did not mention Starscream's exile to Cybertron's nightwatchmech, nor did he give any reason for the request; let Shockwave wonder what he would. Soundwave knew that a chance had come at last to achieve a goal that he had worked towards for hekavorns - ever since Megatron looked upon a crippled, broken scientist and saw a brilliant warrior - the chance to be rid of that screeching nuisance for good.

The list he brought was not the same list that Shockwave had sent. Soundwave had taken the liberty of excising a few names he disliked; here an officer too loyal to Megatron to be swayed to his own plans, there a subcommander with secret intent to support Starscream, here a guard captain too bitter and withered to curry favour with the tyrant. Soundwave wanted a new Air Commander he could control, one who would replace Starscream as favourite, as the one blessedly exempt from the full force of Megatron's wrath, and with his hand upon the shoulder of this new heir, his grip on the future of the Decepticons would be stronger than ever.

When Soundwave transferred the list to Megatron's control terminal, the Decepticon commander gave no sign that he expected intrigue of his communications officer, but Soundwave doubted his duplicity was unsuspected. For too long had Megatron allowed Starscream to sharpen treacherous knives behind his back, that now he heard in every echo, be it innocent or cunning, the ring of whetstone upon blade.

The place where Starscream would have stood was heavy with emptiness. Soundwave found the silence of his absence a near-audible thing, a non-sound with a quality and a texture as unique and unwelcome as the shrieking voice had been.

Megatron read down the list dubiously. "We should address the shortage of experienced officers when we get a moment's opportunity," he muttered, more to himself than his lieutenant. "Nothing suitable above the level of guard captain."

"Shockwave protests officer removal," Soundwave replied, listening to Megatron's fingertips on the computer controls. He had no need to read the data screens when he could more easily hear the words in the soft changes in pitch and tone of electromagnetic radiance on the display. He listened to Megatron, concentrating on the slight changes in rate and depth of aspiration, in speed and strength of fuel pump stroke, in the tiny changes of posture and expression, the low hum of his electromagnetic aura all shot with vibrations of emotion and intention, to any minute murmur that might assist him in guiding his commander to his pre-made choices.

Still that silence sounded, still and deep. Starscream's absence punctuated the sounds as easily as his voice punctured delicate audio-membranes.

"Shockwave will have to make do. All that time alone has made him afraid of change." Megatron skimmed the profiles of the Seeker captains and subcommanders, the officers of watch-tower and barrack alike. Soundwave heard him linger on a record here and there, and he marked the names against his own list of favourites. "By Cybertron's core! How did we come to have such a collection of sheepicrons for commanders?"

"Shockwave favours obedience over initiative," Soundwave commented without hint of emotion, adjusting his mental shortlist accordingly.

"Maybe we should drag him down here," Megatron mused idly, flicking through a few profiles again. "I'm sure he'd enjoy getting himself dirty in the front lines again." Soundwave, as ever, did not respond to his commander's offhand remarks. He listened; Megatron's aspiration rate had increased slightly, and his brow was furrowed in thought. He could hear the chaotic crackle of synaptic activity with concentration, but did not make the effort to perceive Megatron's thoughts. No matter how often Soundwave sampled the tyrant's mind, he found that he could never penetrate the deeper veils of thought; there were closed doors in Megatron's mind that he had no keys to, and such blind spots displeased Soundwave. However, he knew enough already to begin suggesting the most acceptable names on his tally of tokens.

"Sector Twelve Cloudstrike?" he suggested, now picking sops for his commander to find fault in and discard. Megatron glanced at the profile.

"Hmm ... good idea, but too unstable."

"Sector Seven Sunjammer?"

"Primus, no! His ego's big enough as it is."

"Sector Four Stratowhip?"

"Who promoted _him_? Far too stupid! Skywarp would do better."

Soundwave readied in his vocal module his favourite choice: a Seeker naive enough to be gulled and bent to his will, a warrior Megatron would find pleasing in his youth and seek to remake in his own image, an officer untouched by the tides of internal politicking. This one was neither the withered branch felled and trimmed as Starscream's spear, nor the hardened heartwood framing Shockwave's shield, but a fresh green seedling from the vast blasted tree of Decepticon loyalists, ripe for the cultivation of a cunning hand.

With no hint of emotion or trepidation, Soundwave suggested, "Sector Nine Sidewinder?"

"Hardly an ideal choice ..." Megatron looked over the alternatives once more. Soundwave was careful not to give any sign of his tension. "Better him that this lot ... at least he knows the value of heavy ordnance. He'll do. Signal Shockwave and tell him to awaken Sidewinder and inform him of his promotion to Air Commander of Earth Fleet. Have him refitted for Earth duty ... and given that which I ordered retrieved from the stasis vaults."

"As you command, Megatron."

There was no triumph in his tone or expression on mask and visor, but Soundwave's cold core resonated to the tune of a victory march.

 

* * *

 

Starscream waited, as patient and as hungry as cruelty. Gliding on cold engines forty miles above the Autobot enclave, he, the imperial eagle, embraced the thermals and hung silent in mid-heaven. Sharp optics scraped the desert for the first glimmer of prey. On brown dirt, black snakeskin lay dead in the desert; three long and empty roads that separated the Ark from humanity, dust-devilled stretches of animal track for prey species.

Only three routes for the Autobots to take; sooner or later, they had to show themselves, rolling like automated targets, the flash of metal a point of light under the omniscient Sun. They could not hide, only hope to avoid his gaze, and the Sun was unmerciful on polished panoply and gleaming chrome. Thus, the hunt began and ended: with the glow of light on metal. Even the desert was no refuge: where plumes of driven dust rose from frantic tyres, the dirt spray smudged the pure light and his optics, keen and piercing as famine, saw all.

The strike is swift; the sun runs a glittering finger across a roof and spits sparkles into a window, and scuttling insect prey, at first unwary, now fleet with fear, is spotted on black snakeskin. The eagle banks, high as invisibility, silent as clouds, curving around and above and down; stooping, dashing down from the ether, laser claws strafing dead-snake road and raking glimmering carapace. Insect prey flips and tumbles and lies helpless in the dirt, or else struggles, mandibles churning, to no avail. The eagle, carrion eyes a-gleam with hunger, shadow-mantled by knife-wings, tears into prey with sky-bright talons. Fuel tanks are ripped away, hot-bright-life drained into the eagle's unquenchable gape; then, flight, sated, leaving wreck and ruin to suffer in the desert for scavengers to pick up and clean away.

Such moments are sweet with the surety of the torment their compatriots suffer, sweeter still for the anguish of their leader as he tries in vain to circumvent with strategy the patience of the eagle whose ally is the all-seeing eye above. Night does not blind him, he who has plumbed the gulfs between the stars; even with headlights off and dashboard blackened, simple starlight suffices - the thousand suns he has known from ancient wanderings, the myriad eyes of the night - they see for him.

The Autobots cower, and hide, and pray for clouds.

 

* * *

 

The guiltless skies observed the desert arena, one achingly bright eye staring down into the glittering ring of the space bridge, the fated circle delineated in Decepticon metal. To Megatron, it was so deeply reminiscent of the gleaming colosseums of Cybertron - the battle-pits where Decepticon had fought Decepticon for _entertainment_ \- as to turn his mind from future to past. The Autobots made sport out of warfare - Decepticon fuel spilt for their amusement - and, in decadence, came to downfall upon the upraised scythes of the gladiators, the crop of champions threshed clean of Autobot chaff and weakling husks.

 _Now the arena will yield another champion,_ he thought. _Or another corpse._

The air hung heavy with the presentiment of storm, the held-in breath, the hushed moment of anticipation before the first fresh wind sighs in herald of the violent skies to be. Possibility and gravity set their sights on the centre of the steel circle.

The sky inhaled expectation and exhaled light.

To Megatron, the new Seeker looked like every other Seeker he'd met - and he had met several hundred thousand - save only Starscream, whom remained unique from all factions.

He that came was green as a spring forest, both in colour and in wisdom, for he was a Seeker young in experience if not age; not yet callused with the hard, cynical bark of the front-line warrior, not rot-hearted and malign as the static sentinel, but still oozing naive sap and, like a sapling, he was green at heart. His face was pale as silver beech-wood, and his optics red as maple leaves; his trim was of clear amber, for hekavorns of safe duty in a lonesome tower had crystallised his inexperience into a hard caul of nescience. He gleamed too sprucely in his new form, and gazed around at the dust-blown, dirt-tracked open waste with a facile blend of wide-opticed amazement and vain disdain. Megatron could feel the open disapproval of the two veterans as they glared at their new commander.

"Sidewinder," Thundercracker growled. That surprised Megatron, though he did not let it show. Nothing in the newcomer's record indicated he'd ever even been in the same building as the veteran, and he knew, as he had known all along, that Soundwave had tampered with the dossier to hide such facts.

 _What is that wretched symbiont planning this time?_ he wondered. _Is there no end to his silent trickery? What else has he concealed about this one, and what does he aim to achieve through him?_

"Yes, Sidewinder," Megatron extended a hand, gesturing the new arrival towards his new troops. "I see you and Thundercracker are already acquainted. Certainly you will have ample opportunity to get to know your troops better."

"It is an honour to serve you, Liege Megatron."

The optics of the Seekers hardened like spiteful rubies. Megatron clenched his fist and locked the hawsers of his arm to restrain an urge to strike.

 _Bad start,_ he thought. _I didn't even think of striking Starscream until I had known him a full decavorn._

 

* * *

 

Even in Eden, there was a serpent; the Ark was no paradise, and Ravage greater in malice and cunning than any snake. In the broken places and ruptured spaces of the crippled spacecraft, he went silent and invisible, stirring no dust from its lay of old time, reflecting no light. He inched on his belly though knotted passages, and crept huddle-shouldered through sensor nets blind to his cold-dark-silent body. Through narrow shafts that drew brimstone-vapour from the deep volcanic caverns he crept, begrimed with sulphur and fouler, more noxious scents that overloaded his sensitive olfactory module. Like unto the demoniacal familiar of some witch-king, he wriggled and writhed through narrow vents, lit hell-red by the fires of Hephaestus' forges; a dark and bloody shape in the bloody, shapeless darkness.

Silent megacycles of tentative, toiling crawling brought him to a place he and his kindred had marked for their use: a narrow space in the cold lava that overhung the main control chamber of the Ark, wherein he could lie as still as the cooled stone and listen, unobserved. Now, after long and patient waiting, he at last observed a secret meeting of much interest to his master.

"It's the same as all the others," Ratchet told the assembled Autobots in tones made harsh and abrupt by witnessed sorrows. "Brawn was disabled with a null-ray, then torn apart! Starscream took his fuel tanks and a few non-essential parts, then left him to die."

"What parts did he take?" Prowl asked.

"A few metres of high-conductivity wiring, a few fuel pipes, and a fluid control regulator," the medic replied.

"Not the same as the others then?"

"No, different parts each time."

"Combining all the parts he's taken, what could he do with them?" Prowl addressed Ratchet, but Wheeljack answered.

"Small generator's the most obvious answer. All he'd need is a source to hook it up to."

"Why would Starscream be so short of parts that he'd go this far to build his own generator?" Optimus Prime mused. "Standard Decepticon protocol so far has been to raid human facilities."

"What reason's a Deceptibum ever needed to attack us, anyhow?" Ironhide grumbled.

"He just likes to see people suffer," Ratchet replied scathingly.

"Prime's right though," Wheeljack mused. "He could get sufficient base materials for what he needs in one raid on a human site."

"I believe Starscream has become separated from the main Decepticon force," Prowl stated firmly. "He's changed attack protocol from Megatron's main Earth policy to his normal Cybertronian behaviour pattern."

"And this time we don't have tunnels to hide in," Wheeljack interrupted.

"I think Ratchet is right," Prowl continued smoothly. "Starscream wants to see Autobots hurt. He's sending a message, both to us and to Megatron; he wants us all to remember just how dangerous he is. He wants fuel and he wants equipment, but rather than take the low-risk high-gain option of attacking a human facility, he combines necessity with Decepticon pleasure and attacks Autobot targets. It's a higher risk, but what he loses in fuel he gains in prefabricated equipment."

"He's almost as bad as he was on Cybertron," Wheeljack mused.

"Starscream is leaving his victims alive and repairable so he can attack them again later. As soon as his generator is complete, he _will_ start killing," Prowl concluded.

"The further he is from Megatron, the worse he is for us," Prime replied. "Megatron keeps Starscream on a tight rein ... looks like he's gotten loose for once. But has he left, or been kicked out? We knew Megatron was going to punish Starscream over the exponential generator incident, but we need to find out if he's been exiled or has fled from a harsher punishment." The Autobot leader settled back in his chair, firm in his declaration of their ignorance. "We need to find out what is going on in Decepticon headquarters."

"I'll brief Bumblebee immediately," Prowl replied.

"Good," Prime affirmed. "Tell him to be careful."

"In the meantime, we can work out what to do with these deactivated Decepticons we dug out," Wheeljack interjected.

"Yes," Prime commented. "We can't just leave them lying in repair bay. Our human 'hosts' might get the wrong idea if they decide to surprise us with another sudden visit."

"Well, I say we melt 'em down for scrap iron," Ironhide suggested.

"No, Ironhide. Destroying them whilst they are helpless would go against everything we stand for," Prime chided gently.

"So we fix 'em, _then_ smelt 'em?"

"No." Prime paused to think. "We will inter the five deactivated Decepticons in stasis tubes for the moment. At the very least, we'll be keeping five dangerous warriors out of Megatron's control. Who knows? We may one day need to effect a prisoner handover."

A demon exorcised by secret words, Ravage slipped silently into the brimstone-flickering netherworld between the walls of the Ark, to return to his hell-lord with information as valuable as any wriggling soul that a familiar spirit ever laid before its master.

 

* * *

 

Hell-red was Megatron's world, lit with a wrath only just contained by shackles no weaker than were those which bound the great Titans in Hades. The twilight walls of the command chamber were black as obsidian to his sight, and the green Seeker before him dimmed to a blood-stained silhouette, save only for his fear-pale face and his optics that glowed like beacons in the burning night of Megatron's wrath, drawing the fire-storm-force of his rage upon their foolish brightness.

"You will _never_ address me as Liege!" Megatron roared. "That title is _dead_ , as are all those who followed it! I am Megatron, High Commander of the Decepticon Battle Fleet. If I ever hear you utter another reference to those mewling royalist throwbacks, I will eviscerate you with your own wings! _Do you understand_?" Sidewinder nodded fearfully, as if expecting Megatron to engrave the command on the inside of his brain case. "And _secondly_ , how in the name of Cybertron do you know Thundercracker?"

Sidewinder looked a little astonished. "Sir ... he's my brother."

"Your _brother_ ," Megatron rumbled. "Why isn't this in your records?"

"I don't know, sir."

"Stop calling me 'sir' - you're a commander now. Act like it!" Sidewinder flinched. Megatron gave up in frustration as the fire of his anger dimmed to the glow of a brooding volcano. There would be time, later, to instil a little columnar support structure into the shivering Seeker. "Now ... Shockwave entrusted you with certain articles." Sidewinder's face registered blank incomprehension for a moment, and then realisation dawned.

"Ah, yes! He, err, he gave me this." From inside his cockpit, the new Air Commander produced a slim container. Megatron ripped it from his fingers, eagerly examining the contents.

"Perfect," he rumbled. "Soon, the Autobots will face an enemy even their Dinobots cannot defeat!"

"They will?" Sidewinder managed faintly. Megatron restrained an urge to swat the idiot.

"Yes," he grated tersely. "These are the personality components for some of the most dedicated Decepticon warriors - the Constructicons."

"Constructicons? Aren't they ... labourers?"

"Idiot!" This time, Megatron failed to restrain himself, and took a blind swipe at his new Air Commander, missing only on the strength of the Seeker's pre-emptive cringe. "My Constructicons are the most highly skilled engineers and technicians in our army, and fine warriors also." A low rumble of amusement began in his chest. "Better still, they have an unusual and ... _devastating_ power of their own." The rumble broke into a laugh that cracked and failed as Megatron realised Sidewinder was staring at him. From the expression on his face, he clearly believed his commander was loosing his mind, and the seeds of regret put forth new shoots in Megatron's mind. "Idiot! Get out!"

 

* * *

 

"He's a filthy liar," Thundercracker growled.

"What'd he do," Skywarp asked, "Snag your recon maps back in basic training?"

Intent on pulling out the dirty thorn that had infected his comrade with a foul distemper on the long, sullen flight back to base, Skywarp had risked a sound beating from Megatron by stealing energon from main storage in order to loosen Thundercracker's tongue.

Under cover of assisting his wingmate in his scheduled shift of maintenance work, he baiting his comrade into the Pump Room of Tower #4. In truth, the place was a nest of mechanical failures, which would explain their presence if they were questioned. Skywarp remembered Megatron once saying that when Soundwave planned a building and Starscream designed the equipment to go inside it, the inevitable result was chaos.

Still, amongst the low rumble of the hydrox reactor pumps and the steam-filtered light, Skywarp found a dimness and a constancy of thunderous sound that reminded him of the smoke-darkened trenches of Cybertron, and of fortresses under fire, and he felt at home there.

"He says he's my brother," Thundercracker spat. "And he ain't."

"Who'd wanna be _your_ stupid geeky brother?" Frenzy jeered. Skywarp glowered at the Infocon. Unfortunately, the same things that made Pump Room #4 to his liking also made it everyone else's favoured spot for a sneaky break as well. Worse, the twin cassettes were safely hiding in a cavity behind the hydrox pipes, and Skywarp's hands were too large to reach through the gaps. So far, the little punks hadn't made ripping the pipes out worth the effort.

"He's not my brother! He's a slagwad who wishes he'd made the vetus!" Thundercracker punched the wall in frustration. The towering edifice of pipes shuddered with the force.

"Easy, 'cracker! You're gonna blow a fuse at this rate." Skywarp laid a hand on wingmate's intake, trying to calm him.

"Hey!" Rumble yelled, climbing up the pipes to appear on Thundercracker's left. "Who's this snotty creep, anyway? What's he got that you guys ain't?"

"He's got your boss standing behind him," Thundercracker sneered. "Sidewinder can't hit the broadside of Broadside without someone else laying tracer fire. His big claim to fame is moving sideways; he can use his thrusters against an opponent's mass and swing round 'em, like he's being spun on a cord. He looks so glitchin' stupid when he does it, too. Last I heard, he wasn't up to much speed, nor strength ... and I know for a fact he's got fewer brains than a Dinobot. _And_ he's a blasted artillery jet!"

"This grease-stain is in charge?" Skywarp sighed, taking a swig from the astroquart of stolen energon.

"Oh, just you wait," Thundercracker snarled, punching his palm with his fist. There was a seething breed of malevolence in his tone Skywarp had rarely heard before. "Just you leakin' wait."

"You wanna explain?" Skywarp didn't look at his wingmate; instead, he glared at Rumble. Telling the pipsqueaks to get lost would only make them even more determined to stay and invade the conversation, and taking Thundercracker anywhere else ... well, Soundwave would be watching the monitors and at least in here they could explain their extended presence with the excuse of maintenance work.

Thundercracker took the quart-cube from Skywarp's hands and drained half of it. "I told you about my trine, yeah?"

"Ages ago." Skywarp took the cube back. Frenzy and Rumble watched the glow grow less and less with increasing hunger. "What? You want some of this, half-pint? Well, you ain't getting any."

"Yeah," Thundercracker continued. "They were ... oh, it doesn't matter who they were. What matters is, one of my brothers bought it in a street-fight. My other brother, he ... well, he needed the trine. So, he found this lone junk - Sidewinder - and took him in. From then on, Sidewinder's called himself my brother." He fell despondently silent. Skywarp passed him the quart-cube, and he finished it. Rumble sighed. "My other brother hit the dust ... crashed and burned pretty fast. I dumped Sidewinder and went drifting. Got any more of that stuff?"

Skywarp made a show of patting his subspace pockets out, before producing a second quart-cube of very pale energon. Thundercracker took a sip of the thin brightness; Rumble stared longingly.

"I didn't see him again until today," Thundercracker continued. "Heard a few things, though. You remember that time, just before the war started for good, when I got called in from that patrol and didn't come back for a quintun?"

"Yup," Skywarp nodded, not belying a fraction of the panic he'd felt at the time.

"That was his fault. I got hauled in front of Sector Command and grilled for three astrocycles straight about him. Turned out he'd turned up at the base in Stanix and tried to pass himself off as a veteran to the commander."

"What happened to him?"

"The commander let him in."

"Megadeath always was a nut," Rumble shrugged.

"You're only saying that because Megadeath tried to blow yer boss up when he gave that ion-pulse plan the thumbs down," Thundercracker pointed out.

"It was a stupid geeky plan," Frenzy snorted.

Skywarp snickered. "It was a _loony_ plan. Megadeath was almost as loony as Straxus."

"Yeah, but when Megatron kicked his aft from Colderon to Vilnacron, Straxus knew he was beat and stayed down. Megadeath was too stupid to know when to give up," Rumble opined.

Thundercracker raised the quart-cube in salute to the comment. "Here's to the both of 'em - a bigger pair of nuts I've yet to meet."

"What about Starscream?" Frenzy interjected, causing Thundercracker to pause with the quart-cube halfway to his facial input-output module.

"Starscream? Sure, he's nuts, but he's nuts like Megatron, not nuts like Megadeath," Skywarp replied.

Thundercracker frowned; Skywarp took advantage of his thoughtful pause to relieve him of the energon. "Yeah ... Starscream's like Megatron. Nuts, but ... not so it matters. Much. Straxus ... he was nuts in a real bad way. Megadeath was a basket case - but Thunderwing, his lieutenant, he wasn't - picked up on Sidewinder fast and dragged him over to Darkmount, demanding an explanation." Thundercracker snatched the quart-cube back and took a long swig. "And I got four astrocycles in the brig for it! Primus, I would've scrapped him if I could've found him!"

"What happened to him?" Skywarp asked again.

Thundercracker drained the quart-cube; disappointed, Rumble slid down the pipes to the floor, and Skywarp heard Frenzy sigh somewhere near his knee. "High Command took one look at him and tossed him into basic training. I guess they figured he was worth throwing in the air." Thundercracker snickered, and then turned to Skywarp. "Remember when we got assigned to Starscream? How we went and raided all the records because our security clearance went up two levels?"

"Yeah, that was fun." He grinned at Rumble. "Almost as fun as a game of kick-the-cassette."

"I found his service record," Thundercracker continued, smothering Rumble's protest. "It was like the best joke I ever heard! He tried out for the vetus - three times! Failed miserably. Starscream wrote his last assessment, said that Sidewinder should never be given responsibility for anything bigger than an outpost guard." He imitated the exile's scream-scarred voice, " ' _Providing it's a very small outpost_ '."

"He's not a veteran?" Frenzy asked, astounded. Even to an Infocon, the concept of a non-elite Seeker commanding elite veterans was abhorrent.

"Well, he must've got the mark whilst we were all nulled out," Skywarp decided. "Shockwave probably gives 'em out like energon goodies. Old One-Eye wouldn't know a Chandelle from an Immelmann if we demonstrated with bombs flying."

"He bypassed," Thundercracker groused. "When the base at Aphelion caught that tac' missile assault, remember?"

"Yeah, Sector Nine Command were all gathered for some hearing or other, and the lousy Autobots blew up the whole building," Skywarp dismissed the matter indifferently.

"Sidewinder was late. After the blast, he was the ranking officer in Sector Nine, and that's how he got to be guard captain." Thundercracker snorted. "If he'd been nearer the battle lines, he'd never've lasted ..."

"But once the big manufactory in the Aphelion base went, there wasn't anything of strategic interest in Sector Nine," Frenzy finished, earning puzzled looks from both Seekers. "Hey, I ain't just a pretty face, ya know! Whaddaya think we're doing inside Soundwave, recharging?"

"Ah, shut up," Thundercracker grumbled. "If I'm gonna sulk, I ain't gonna put up with you and you -"

" _Hey_!" Rumble burst from between the pipes he was sheltered behind and ran for the door, closely followed by Frenzy.

"What the - oh, wing-nuts!" Skywarp groaned as he saw Rumble tackle one-third of Reflector to the ground. He and Thundercracker roused themselves from their comfortable lounging to beat the negatives out of the voyeuristic little creep now trying to disentangle himself from two irate Infocons. "Damn, can't we even shirk in our own base without someone spying on us?"

 

* * *

 

The Decepticon Earth-base was unnervingly hushed. Although Cybertron had lain quiet as the grave for hekavorns, Sidewinder had not experienced the vast and mournful silence of its eternal night. His most recent memories were of the dull orderly life of his outpost tower, and he found he already missed all its constant sounds: the regular tramp of feet in the corridors, the voices from further chambers, the mutter of communications channels ... all gone.

If the Earth-base was quiet, the first of its inhabitants he'd met was certainly not so.

"So, anyway, yer quarters are down this way, not up on the command level, coz yer not actually a real commander yet, so yer sharing a common room with Thundercracker and Skywarp, and yer quarters are off that, and you can use main storage along with everyone else, and if ya want to get any spare parts ya better do it fast because someone's being brought in to run the inventory soon, or at least that's what Rumble told me, well, he said that -"

 _Dear Primus, does this little runt ever shut up?_ Sidewinder wondered, following the tinker-toy drone-thing through the labyrinthine corridors. _First I have to wait almost an entire megacycle for this so-called guide to appear, and when it does, it puts its vocal into overdrive. I've been all over this base four times now - must've been walking around for almost three megacycles! - and I swear I haven't seen a single useful location. I have no idea where the armoury is, where main storage is, how to get back to the command tower._ So far, he had been lead down from the command chamber into an apparently endless maze of unused corridors, through empty chambers, past inactive machinery, and in and out of endless featureless tunnels. _Why is this place so big, anyway? There are only a half-dozen warriors here, if that. Unless there are more of these runts._ He eyed the homunculus with distaste; it was no taller than his knee. _It seems more likely it could shout the Autobots to death than shoot them,_ he thought snidely. He tried to extrapolate its function and transformation from its build, but could only imagine it converted into something little more than a featureless rectangle. _Like an over-sized data cassette ... what possible use could that be?_ He regarded the paired weaponry on the drone-thing's back. _Perhaps it's a miniature gun platform? I suppose that could be it ..._

" - and that's why you gotta make sure you never let Megatron catch you in there, because _wow_ does he get torqued about it and this is yer place here, bye!"

Sidewinder found himself facing a door. He turned to ask the runt-thing a question, and realised it was gone.

He stared at the door. It seemed ominously solid, as if it wished to ensure he never passed beneath its lintel. He wondered if Thundercracker would be pleased to see him; he'd never had the chance to ask his brother why he'd left so abruptly and if he'd ever meant to come back.

Squaring his shoulders against the past, Sidewinder entered the common room.

Thundercracker sat at a computer terminal, afterburners on the console. A black Seeker stood behind him, leaning the back of his chair. They both turned to stare at him. Sidewinder stared back, silently daring them to challenge his new authority.

Thundercracker rose from his seat and went into his quarters, locking the door behind him. The other shook his head disbelievingly.

"Welcome to Earth," he waved ironically. "It gets worse from here. I'm Skywarp, if nobody told you already."

Sidewinder strolled across the room, taking in the workstations laden with strange articles, most of them tiny and brightly coloured and entirely alien to him. _Earth things?_ he wondered. "What gets worse?"

"Everything," Skywarp replied, leaning back against the terminal. "In case you hadn't found out, we aren't exactly winning the war here." He smiled; it was neither friendly nor respecting, but thin and mocking. Sidewinder ignored that as he went to an unused terminal. "Do you need me to turn the console on for you, _boss_?"

"I was told that was Starscream's fault," Sidewinder replied, ignoring the sneer and activating the console to call up the current flow of monitoring data on Earth. It seemed a nasty, primitive sort of place. _Wonderful,_ Sidewinder thought as he perused the tactical data updates. _The Autobots outnumber us two-to-one at least, they have a heavy-duty melee group we can't complement for ... and the natives are supplying their energy and materials._

"Sure, right," Skywarp snickered. "That's Soundwave for you. The next time we get our afterburners kicked in, it's gonna be you who gets a punch in the cockpit from His Nibs."

 _His Nibs?_ Sidewinder paused in his data perambulations to call up a translation for the unfamiliar Earth-term; it made little sense to him. He wondered if Skywarp was going native. He'd heard of it happening to warriors who spent too long on alien world; they immersed themselves in the xeno-culture, until they were as attached to the xenos world as the natives, until Cybertron no longer held meaning to them, and then they were lost to the Decepticon cause. Sidewinder decided that Skywarp might well be on that slippery slide into mindless organic mimicry, and then turned to examine Starscream's data profile, seeking some hint of what Megatron expected of him. He read his predecessor's service record with a draining feeling in his fuel tanks. Starscream's career dripped with glory and conquest. The missing Air Commander's reputation as a hunter, a killer, the one from whom there was no escape - the past bore him testimony. He was unstoppable, unpredictable, unmerciful ... oh, and Megatron's heir apparent.

"Status: missing in action," he murmured aloud, and wondered at that.

"Like I said; that's Soundwave for you," Skywarp grinned. "Megatron said he could spin a half-truth into a web of lies faster than petrorabbits can multiply."

Sidewinder heard the respect in Skywarp's tone when spoke of their leader, and swore to himself, _He'll be speaking of me like that soon_. "From what I've heard of Soundwave, he's Megatron's personal communications technician."

Skywarp laughed humourlessly and slapped the terminal he was leaning on. "Soundwave? A com-tech aide? How long were you stuck in the boondocks again?"

Sidewinder paused to check the meaning of the Earth-word, shrugged again, and continued re-reading Starscream's record. "Rumours don't concern me. He's a communications officer and nothing more."

"Soundwave's a cassette-host," Skywarp giggled.

"Oh, _yuck_ ," Sidewinder muttered, grimacing in disgust. "I thought they'd all been destroyed or something." Skywarp shrugged. "And Megatron lets it run the communications?"

"Megatron lets him run half the damn army."

 _Damn?_ Sidewinder had to take a moment to translate the latest Earth-word, and made even less sense of it than the ones before. _This Skywarp must be going native,_ he concluded. _Cassette-hosts, runt-things, Seekers going native - this unit is in a terrible state!_ "Well, at least he'll be confined to the base, so we won't see much of him," he sighed.

"Sidewinder," Skywarp said calmly. "He's not a tech. He's built like Megatron. He's got a bigger gun than you have. He fights. All the time." Sidewinder winced disdainfully. "And you know what? He's _your_ patron."

"What? I've never -"

"Nuh-uh. Soundwave bought you. Who d'you think picked you to take Starscream's place?"

"Megatron."

"Yeah, he made the decision, but it must've been Soundwave who suggested your name; Screamer ain't here and Old One-Eye didn't get a look-in. Face it; he's bought you. He put you up for the post, he talked Megatron into promoting you, you're _his_ , you sorry son of a Cessna."

Sidewinder found he was growing tired of the Seeker's semi-native needling. "Oh, so what? So this Soundwave got me this position; just shows he knows a good officer when he sees one."

Skywarp made a noise; a gentle imitation of an engine stalling, a vocal suggestion that Sidewinder had suffered a malfunction in his brain-module. "Yeah, you're good, you're so damn good Starscream slated you so hard you've been stuck in an outpost tower in a backwater state for seven hekavorns. You're not even a _veteran_ \- _I_ outrank _you_!"

"Get out of my flight-path!" Sidewinder snapped, whipping around to glare at the other: back straight, arms stiff, turrets hot, target-locks circling in his vision.

"Oh, yeah? You and what wingmen, huh?" Skywarp squared off to him, fists balled. "You know why you're here? You're the newly elected fall guy. When _we_ fail, _you_ get blamed. When the Autobots kick our tailfins, _you_ get blamed. When Megatron's ticked off just 'cause it's Tuesday, guess what? _You're_ gonna get it."

"Stand down or I'll make you into missile casings!" Sidewinder snapped.

"You just try it! I'll have your internals for chaff!" Skywarp raised his fists, and Sidewinder readied himself to fight for his new post. A flicker of a smile passed across Skywarp's face, and he stood down. "Well, I would if I didn't think Megatron'd use me for target practice. You may not be Starscream, but you're still under the boss's protection."

"Starscream? Megatron would protect _Starscream_?" Sidewinder laughed. "I'm _amazed_ that lunatic is alive! He's only defected _six_ times." He gestured to the screen, to the glaring demerits plastered across the service record.

"Oh, yeah, all that," Skywarp waved dismissively. "Megatron said it was all planned."

"He was with the Autobots on Tergiversar I for almost two vorns!"

"Yeah, yeah, and he talked half of 'em into shooting the other half and swearing allegiance to the cause. It was all planned."

"Oh, and you know this _how_?" Sidewinder snapped, patience wearing thin.

"Hey, I wasn't built yesterday! Starscream's had a knife out for Megatron's back for four hekavorns, and he's _still alive_. How many 'cons have had a go at knocking the boss off, Sidewinder? Hundreds? _Thousands?_ How many of 'em are still alive? How many of 'em got away with trying that? Starscream, and that's it! You take a stab at Megatron, you die - except Starscream! He's got something, I don't know what, but whatever it is, I ain't messing with it. Starscream's _protected_."

"He _was_ protected," Sidewinder pointed out.

"Nope, he still is. If Megatron wanted him gone, he'd be dead already. Starscream can get away with things that would get anyone else slagged outright." Sneaky, sly smiling on his faceplate. "Just you ask the boss. I'm telling ya; Starscream's _protected_."

Skywarp, still smirking coldly, sauntered into his own quarters, leaving Sidewinder to stare again at the long, impressive history of his unmet nemesis.

_He's out there, somewhere, on this flat, damp, dirty planet, and he probably wants to kill me._

_No. Scratch that. He wants to kill me. There's no question about that. The question is ... how long do I have to prepare for him?_

 

* * *

 

A mood of truculent victory spread though the Autobots gathered in the Ark's main corridor. Fresh laser-wounds still smouldering, armour ragged and tires melted, still the four returning warriors were feted as victors, not victims.

" - and he dives down _pow pow pow_ and I'm right there and ready for him and it's just _bang bang_ right up his nosecone and he's gone!" Bluestreak rattled, smoke still rising from the shot-off stump of his right door. "With his nose on fire and smoke everywhere and yelling his head off like you'd think his vocal circuitry was about to go and he wanted to get as much out as he could before it blew." The gunner paused in his recitation to wince as his door-stump spurted sparks.

"Given the difficulty of maintaining an accurate target lock under such heavy fire, I must once again commend your shooting abilities," Prowl nodded, careful not to dislodge the battered chevron slowly detaching itself from his forehead.

"Just a shame ya had to getcha'self shot up in doing it," Ironhide shrugged.

"Yeah, next time you should just paint a big target on yourself," Sideswipe teased, prodding Bluestreak's door-stump with a scorched finger. Sunstreaker just sniffed, engrossed in cataloguing the damage to his paintwork and muttering about it being the last time he ever volunteered to escort Bumblebee anywhere ever again.

"Aw, I'm all right," Bluestreak grinned, rubbing his head sheepishly. "It's all superficial." He flinched as another burst of sparks sprayed from his stump.

Ironhide chuckled. "Y'done good, kid. Any hit on ol' Starcreep is a hit for the team." He patted Bluestreak on the shoulder, and flakes of blistered paint came away on his hand.

"A definite improvement on the situation," Optimus Prime commented to Prowl. "Hopefully at no lasting cost. I take it Bumblebee got out of the reservation?"

"He should reach the coast in approximately six megacycles," Prowl replied.

"We could have avoided this battle if I had carried him out myself," Prime said pensively.

"We needed to let Starscream know he can't continue to prey on the smaller Autobots," Prowl insisted fiercely. "Even on your own, you're too large a target for him. Using this stratagem we demonstrated that we can and _will_ protect our troops on the highways."

"Providing we have strike teams sitting under cover waiting for a distress signal," Prime commented dubiously. "Damage assessment?"

"Bluestreak and Sideswipe will require Ratchet's attention, but their damages are not life-threatening. The majority of wounds to myself and Sunstreaker are superficial or merely cosmetic."

" _Merely_ cosmetic?" Sunstreaker interrupted.

"And Starscream?" Prime forestalled the tirade of paint-related complaint.

"Bluestreak accurately targeted two full-strength ion charges into Starscream's nosecone. Given that a Seeker's nosecone is one of the most heavily armoured parts of his body, and that Starscream has high-quality armour, and that neither his weapons systems nor his flight mechanisms were damaged, my tactical assessment is that he will require approximately seven megacycles of internal repairs before he reaches optimal operating capability, and that he remains a clear and present threat to this facility and our human allies."

"In other words, he's gone off to polish his armour and sulk," Ironhide digested. "Prime, we oughta go after that viper 'n' finish him off for good!"

Behind him, someone sighed heavily. Prowl turned around quickly enough to see Skyfire hoisting a carefully-crafted mask of camaraderie over an expression of sorrow. The scientist feigned a friendly smile, and edged past the gathering without a word.

"What crawled up his afterburner and died?" Sideswipe wondered.

"Once a Decepticon, always a Decepticon," Ironhide grumbled darkly. "I still say we can't trust that oversized cyber-condor."

"That's enough," Prime ordered. "Skyfire's already proven his loyalty to us. I don't want to hear any more remarks like that."

Prowl watched his leader usher Bluestreak and Sideswipe towards Ratchet's domain, and heard his soft words of congratulation to the gunner.

"You may not want to hear it, Prime, but they're going to say it anyway," he muttered. "We've been wrong about defectors before."

"Yeah," Ironhide replied. "We were wrong on Tergiversar I, fer starters."

 

* * *

 

The summons came at nightfall. Skyfire sighed, as he found himself doing so often now, and gave up pretending to concentrate on his latest project. As he had expected, Optimus Prime wanted to talk to him, and he was in little doubt about what.

The walk down the main corridor, into the control room, and through that to Prime's inner sanctum seemed long and dreary. Despite walking downwards, despite the gravitational micro-generators that laced the floor, Skyfire felt as if he was toiling up a steep incline, pushing the weight of his history ahead of him.

He did not fit in.

 _I should be used to this,_ he thought. _I'm an explorer ... or I was ...I used to live with alien cultures, alien races, beings that make our superficial similarities to the humans seem like a deep kinship. I ..._

_I was with Starscream then._

He bowed his head against the truth, and it was bitter in his fuel tanks. Even on the most alien world, under vivid green skies where creatures like hanging vines communicated in an incomprehensible scent-language, and the air swirled with a million emotional perfumes, there had always been the guiding light of a single star to bring him home.

_It is him. He fills up my life._

Starscream's existence clung about him like a veil, a heavy drapery that he could not tear through, for to do so would mean shredding his life, tearing himself into little pieces. Skyfire felt as if he was flying through the edge of a storm, and that he had to choose between fleeing from it, escaping the self-destruction it would bring, or flying for its centre, into its still eye where he would be no longer Skyfire, but some person without past or name, a mere survivor of battersome winds.

 _Either way, there will be no peace,_ he thought sadly. _They do not trust me in battle, they do not trust me in science and they do not trust me as a person._ The Autobots did not accept him, because of his past with Starscream, yet he held out hope that they would eventually see him as more than a scientist with bad friends, as more than a tentative ally.

Skyfire set his mind to order. _I will treat this like a visit to a new, alien world,_ he decided. _I will work on gaining their trust like I ... like we ..._ and his plan fell apart. He no longer had Starscream, who could reach xenotechnology like clear text, who perceived networks and hierarchies where he himself became baffled. _No, I will make it work. These Autobots are not an alien civilisation: they are my kin. I do not need Starscream to help me understand them._

 _I do_ not _need Starscream._

The door to Prime's sanctum stood before him. Taking a deep aspiration in automatic imitation of the dominant native species, though his systems needed no extra gas-fuels or cooling, Skyfire touched the door-chime.

"Come in," Prime said, as the door slid open. Skyfire told himself not to be nervous; _here I am, visiting the local chieftain, the leader of the group, and I shall ..._ Prime looked up from the data displays on his console, and Skyfire's make-believe world fell apart.

"Skyfire." The Autobot commander regarded the scientist with a grave expression. He did not invite the scientist to sit down; the chairs were too small for him. _Yet another way I do not fit in,_ Skyfire thought. "No doubt you've heard about the current situation."

"I have been informed." The white jet remained patiently neutral, knowing what was coming his way. _Please, please, please don't ask me to do it,_ he prayed. _Even if I wanted to, I don't think I can._

"I need to ask a favour of you, Skyfire." Prime had the decency to sound uncomfortable with his decision. "You are our only flier, and the only one amongst us who can stop him in the air."

"I - I'm not the only one," Skyfire fumbled. "Sideswipe has his jet-pack, and Wheeljack, and ... and there's Swoop!"

"If equipping ground-troops with rocket-packs was enough to make us equal to Seekers in the air, we'd use them all the time," Prime replied sadly. "Swoop was designed to attack ground targets; he's too slow and too low-flying to effectively attack a Seeker. Besides, Skyfire, he's only four weeks old; he's far too inexperienced."

 _I'm not?_ Skyfire thought unhappily. _Swoop could destroy me in aerial combat - I have a thruster section as big as a transport module and armour eleven hekavorns old._

"Maybe in a few hundred years, he'll be capable of tackling the Seekers one-on-one," Prime continued. "Until then, you are our only true aerial warrior."

"Prime," Skyfire sighed, again, wishing the leaden weight on his shoulders would ease, just for a moment, so that he could look up at the sky and see if there was any light to guide him. "Starscream's flight mode is combat-optimised, and he has hekavorns of experience. I may be bigger than he is, but fighting in the air - dogfighting in atmosphere - there's a lot more to it than tonnage."

"I'm not asking you to defeat him," Prime replied, sounding confident in Skyfire's abilities. Skyfire thought Prime was overestimating him. "I'm not asking you to destroy him. I'm asking you to chase him off. We've been taking a big gamble using our warriors as escorts, and eventually we're going to lose, badly. Eventually the Decepticons will attack and our warriors will be scattered all over the area. We can't let that happen, and we can't let Starscream's raids continue." Skyfire lowered his proptovenes, not wanting to see Prime's face when he asked, " _Please_ , Skyfire. Help us."

In a small voice that did not seem to be his own, Skyfire replied, "I ... I will try."

 

* * *

 

"Any idea what the boss wants?" Skywarp asked when Thundercracker ran into him.

"No idea," he replied, not breaking his stride. "But we're late."

"We're always late," Skywarp chuckled, although he jogged along behind his wingmate without rancour. "This base is too big!"

"It's the bilge doors," Thundercracker grumbled. "Every time we get a call, I'm always on the other side of the base and at least one set of bilge doors always jams on me." He glanced at Skywarp. "Why're _you_ running?"

"I don't want to get to him early," Skywarp replied, as they reached the command tower. "Because Sly-winder is with him."

"Rivets and rust!" Thundercracker muttered. "I'd been trying to forget about him."

They rounded the last corner and sighted Megatron, with Sidewinder trailing after him like a kicked puppy after its master. Target locks circled in Thundercracker's vision, zeroing in on Sidewinder's vulnerable spots.

"Ah, there you are." Megatron was clearly in good humour. Thundercracker turned his targeting scanners off and prayed the unusually sunny disposition would last a while. "I have a little task for the three of you."

 _Three? Oh, blast, Sidewinder's first mission!_ Thundercracker suddenly wished the sky would open up and smelt him.

"My Constructicons require new bodies." Megatron was addressing Sidewinder, but Thundercracker saw the flicker of his optics as he glanced pointedly at Skywarp and himself. "Soundwave has located a source for what we require. You will acquire and retrieve the items we need - _without_ alerting the Autobots to your task." Then he transmitted the mission plan over internal radio; a blinding, deafening screed of raw information that rushed into their systems like a top-grade recharge. Thundercracker felt the invigoration of new data, and was no longer dismayed by his task and its implications. Since the crash-landing of the space cruiser, much of his work had been stealth raiding for energy and materials, and the construction work that inevitably followed. It wasn't precisely what he signed up for, but, well, it was better than what he left behind.

"But ... what about Starscream?" Sidewinder asked.

Megatron looked at him darkly, as if trying to smelt the Seeker with the heat of his burning glare alone. " _What_ about Starscream?"

"Shouldn't we try to, err, ensure he doesn't interfere?"

"Starscream is of no concern to you. Forget about him." Megatron turned his back on them, and Thundercracker allowed his expression of dutiful attention to slide away.

Skywarp looked at their new commander, and shrugged. "Are we going then?"

Sidewinder looked flustered. "Err ... yes ... I suppose we are."

Thundercracker stared bleakly at Sidewinder as he headed for the docking tower, and then glanced at Skywarp with a doleful expression.

"Aw, cheer up," Skywarp grinned. "Maybe someone will shoot him."

"I'd volunteer," Thundercracker muttered.

 

* * *

 

"Are you sure he can't see through your holograms, Hound?" Trailbreaker asked the jeep on his left, his normal good humour laced with tension as the four-strong convoy rolled out into the desert turned killing ground. All around, the dust-lands reclined humbled and prostrate beneath the wheeling, searing Sun.

"I sure hope not," Hound replied, his own cheer strained by recent memories of the heat-bleached sky giving violent birth to blade-winged agony and humiliation. "I'm pretty certain he only caught us last time because of our dust trail."

Jazz remained noticeably silent as they headed for the checkpoint that marked the edge of the Autobot reservation, hanging behind Trailbreaker like a trailer. It had been three terracycles since Starscream left the saboteur for dead in a dry river-gully. For seven hours he had lain in the dirt, before they found him and discovered that - perhaps in retaliation against Bluestreak's good shooting, perhaps merely for fun - Starscream had torn his face apart.

"What do we look like?" Ironhide asked after half a mile.

"Cliffjumper," Hound replied quietly to the van behind him. "Well, we're kind of driving behind an image of him."

"Whose idea was that?" Ironhide wondered with a faint chuckle. He was the only one of the four not to have suffered.

"Prowl's," Jazz replied hoarsely, his voice little more than a whisper.

"You shouldn't a' come," Ironhide told him. "Should'a let Sunstreaker get a few more smuts on his paint playin' bait."

" 's the only way t' fight it," Jazz murmured. "Ain't nothing nice 'bout this war. Y'just gotta do what's gotta be done."

"Yeah, but if Skyfire lets us down, you ain't ..." Ironhide grunted at his own remark. "If that flyin' tin-can lets us down, I'm gonna make sure he -"

The attack came without warning; laser fire ruptured the road in front of them. Taken by surprise, they instinctively broke formation. To Starscream, it must've seemed as if two Autobots suddenly appeared out of nowhere as Trailbreaker and Jazz veered right, away from Hound and out from under the hologram.

The Decepticon's response was swift; a cluster missile exploded low overhead, seven separate warheads seeking targets. Two struck behind Jazz, flipping him over; he transformed in mid-air and landed scorched and buckled but on his feet. Two more went for Trailbreaker, but his forcefield saved him. The remaining three struck into the hologram field; one went wild but Hound took two in the side, and rose into the air on a pillar of fire.

"Blow that chrome-plated crackpot outta the air!" Ironhide yelled, transforming and opening fire. Starscream sliced between his shots, unsinged, as Hound lay smouldering and silent in the desert. Jazz and Trailbreaker joined the fire-fight, Trailbreaker taking position to shelter them with his forcefield.

Starscream curled back on his flight-path, swinging in for a low strafing run. His shadow cut a flickering path across the fallen bones of the broken hillsides.

"He's decided to fight," Ironhide snarled, glancing at Hound lying belly-up in the sand and as vulnerable as a child. "Dammit, of all the days he decides to play brave."

"He's got a right to feel brave," Trailbreaker yelled, firing on the jet and missing. "He's the one with the big missiles!"

"Yeah, but we got some bigger reinforcements," Jazz replied, stumbling out of the path of Starscream's lasers as they needled the road. Even with the outer parts of his legs blown off and his windows shattered, the battle was stripping away his memories of helplessness.

 _[C'mon Skyfire, get your snowy caboose over here!]_ Ironhide yelled over the radio.

The tech-jet crested the last rise of hill-bones with a burst of thruster-fire, as Starscream slashed out of a strafing run with Autobot fire around his tailfins.

 _[I'll handle things from here,]_ Skyfire promised, and the three warriors cheered him as he poured on the power, climbing after Starscream until they both vanished from sight.

An all-units call came in over the radio. _[Decepticon attack! Sector omicron, sub-sector rugby, co-ordinates nine-seven-one by four-seven-zero! All units respond!]_ Teletran-1 ordered.

_[Prime to Convoy Decoy; report status.]_

_[They're fightin' in the sky, Prime! Hound's down and Jazz is hurtin']_ Ironhide reported.

 _[Convoy Decoy, return to base,]_ Prime ordered. He did not sound pleased.

 

* * *

 

Starscream lead Skyfire a twisting, tortuous chase through the air, swinging and turning through high skies, vanishing into the Sun only to reappear near the ground, diving into canyons ahead only to suddenly appear on his tail.

 _He's too good at this,_ Skyfire thought desperately. _To think I was annoyed when Cliffjumper called me a flying taxi! I can't do this - I'm just a big target up here._

As if to reinforce this point, Starscream strafed him gently along one side, slicing past like an arrow, then diving down. Left flank itching with plasma burns, Skyfire dove after his erstwhile companion, taking hopeless pot-shots at his afterburners. He missed completely.

Starscream dove into an arroyo and disappeared into radar shadow; Skyfire turned on his side and skimmed along the rim of the arroyo, hoping to present a smaller target even though he was almost certain Starscream was no longer below him. He could have accelerated and be far ahead, or -

The blasts came from behind and above: null-rays, and they struck him just behind his cockpit, right over his system nexus. His engines died abruptly. Skyfire went down clumsily, air braking as best he could but still slithering half a mile in rocky dirt before coming to rest.

He was transforming slowly when Starscream landed on him, slamming him down on his back in the dirt. Skyfire pawed at him weakly, but the Seeker's null-ray quickly paralysed his arms.

"Decepticon," Skyfire snarled, trying to get up and failing. "You will pay for this."

"Shut up for a moment," Starscream replied disinterestedly. He looked around, presumably checking his sensors. "Your Autobot friends are moving in our direction; we'd better finish this discussion in private." He targeted Skyfire's face with his arm-turret. "Stay still. This won't hurt until you wake up."

The world went cold, and white, and silent.


	3. Between Two Powers Broken

 

**Between Two Powers Broken**

You shall be my roots and

I will be your shade

though the sun burns my leaves

_  
_

You shall quench my thirst and

I will feed you fruit,

though time takes my seed

_  
_

And when I'm lost and can tell nothing of this earth

you will give me hope

_  
_

And my voice you will always hear

And my hand you will always have

_  
_

For I will shelter you.

And I will comfort you.

And even when we are nothing left,

not even in death,

I will remember you  
  
---  
  
Mark Danielewski, _You Shall Be My Roots_  
  
  


Skywarp clasped a hand to the back of his head, mostly to stop the battered armour from falling off, and sat down heavily on a boulder. "Damn," he groaned, his voice echoing in the caverns of their new land-base. Around him were stacked crates of internal parts and gear systems and five mud-encrusted human construction vehicles painted various bilious shades of yellow, orange and green. "Sidewinder's gonna go down in history as the worst Air Commander ever."

"Yeah," Thundercracker agreed, sitting down on a nearby crate to pick pieces of shrapnel from his right afterburner. "And we're gonna be remembered as the guys he got killed."

"Sooner Soundwave gets here, the better," Skywarp grumbled, watching Thundercracker tinker with his damages. With Starscream gone, Soundwave was the only true technician left in the base, and both of them had wounds in need of skilled attention. "I'm supposed to be pulling Ravage out of the 'bot-camp in four megacycles."

"After taking _that_ hit?"

"Yeah, that's my point," Skywarp muttered sorely.

"One day, I'm gonna get my hands on that Wheeljack and stuff that missile launcher of his down his ingestion conduit," Thundercracker grumbled, flicking shrapnel at Skywarp, who flicked it back.

"Not before we pull those stupid wings off his back."

"Yeah. After we shoot him out of the air ... stupid Autobot, thinks he can fly."

"Or we could just blow him up."

"Nah, he does that often enough anyway. I figure he must have some immunity to explosions."

"Heh, no! It'll just take a really big boom."

"Now _that_ I like the sound of." Thundercracker paused to wiggle a particularly awkward piece of shrapnel from his shin. "Next time we run into him, I'm gonna force-feed him the biggest drone rocket I've got."

"Right up the afterburner!"

"He doesn't _have_ an afterburner."

"Tail-pipe, then."

"Yeah." Thundercracker grinned dreamily, envisaging the final loud explosion of the Autobot scientist.

"Hey, where'd Sidewinder go?" Skywarp wondered, now using his left hand to hold the back of his head on.

"Probably off grovelling to Megatron," Thundercracker sneered, then imitated the new commander's voice, " ' _I'm so sorry Liege Megatron, I didn't realise the Autobots here shot back!_ ' Dumb bomber, where did he think we were, on a target-shooting range?"

"Yeah, and we were the targets!" Skywarp shook his head gently and made a noise in imitation of a falling bomb to indicate surprise. "Megatron said there was a line between being brave and being stupid, and I guess we know which side he's on now, charging Prime like that."

"Ah, he only did it because he didn't realise Prime'd belt him clear across the place. How many times did he bounce? Four?"

"Five, before he hit that wall." Skywarp laughed. "And then that little red runt goes up and smacks him one in the face!"

"What'd he do? I was too busy trying to scrape that blasted Auto-cop off my cargo to see."

"Picked him up and threw him back at Prime."

"That was just before he unloaded everything he had on the bots, right?"

"Where else did you think that explosion came from? Primus, now I know why Megatron picked _him_ \- they got the same taste in the loud and painful stuff."

"Too much and plenty of it," Thundercracker commented, prying a stubborn piece of shrapnel from his leg.

"Dumb bomber," Skywarp grimaced, tapping the back of his head. "Didn't he see me? I know it's a command thing to shoot anyone you don't like, but dumping eight missiles into a ground-scrap ain't on my list of smart moves."

"He didn't see you," Thundercracker grumbled. "Probably too busy looking for another minibot to throw." He chuckled. "I hate to admit it, but I like that image."

"Minibot tossing, the best sport in the galaxy!" Skywarp waved his free hand as if gesturing to a banner.

"Huh. We were lucky there was only the five of 'em, and two of 'em were runts."

"Yeah, guess we got out just in time. Don't fancy trying to fight a full 'bot convoy _and_ haul cargo around at the time."

"And we only got five of the things out."

"Ah, the other one's safe. I 'ported it out."

"Oh, that's where you went. I wondered where my cover fire'd gone," Thundercracker mock-scowled. "I'd hate to have to tell Megatron we failed. He's been hair-trigger since Sidewinder arrived."

"Probably misses Starscream."

"He must be the only person who does," Thundercracker snorted, but his core wasn't in the remark.

"Ah, you know it's true."

"What, _them_?" Thundercracker half-laughed.

"Gotta be," Skywarp nodded soberly.

"I don't believe it."

Skywarp's serious expression slowly melted into a broad grin. "Hey, why else does the boss keep him around?"

" 'warp, you're a _sick_ mechanism," Thundercracker scoffed, then laughed.

Megatron and Soundwave arrived as dusk was falling, trailed by Sidewinder, the Seeker laden under the weight of a rusty yellow crane. Soundwave was looking - if one knew how to look, as Thundercracker did - for an opportunity to escape the blast radius of the tyrant's brimming rage. Megatron smouldered in ill-banked anger as Sidewinder disengaged his cargo, and then discharged his temper upon the new commander in a barrage of verbal abuse.

"You incompetent _imbecile_! How could you make such a ridiculous mess of such a simple operation?"

Thundercracker watched with satisfaction in his optics as Sidewinder cowered, Megatron's anger focusing on him like fire rushing up a tree-trunk, knowing that he and Skywarp were not to be blamed.

"The Autobots ... " the new commander quailed.

"Should never have known you were there!" Megatron struck at Sidewinder, who fell on his back in order to avoid the swing. "I specifically ordered you to avoid alerting the Autobots, and you charged in like an infantry division! Did you even read the intelligence reports? You were lucky only three warriors responded before you withdrew!"

Soundwave caught Thundercracker's gaze, gesturing with the slightest inclination of his head to the back of the cavern. The two Seekers followed the cassette-host into the relative shelter of the construction material. Megatron's voice still boomed and echoed around the cavern, smothering Sidewinder's weak protests. Skywarp released his hold on the back of his head; the panel came off in his hand. "Blast. How bad is it, 'cracker?"

Thundercracker leaned around to look at his wingmate's damage. "Ugly. Two of your sockets are fried and the casing's melted."

"Ah, could be worse. It's not like we're going to merge with anything any time soon." Wordlessly, Soundwave picked up a cutting torch and tested it. Skywarp grinned. "Great! Full functionality, here I come."

"Negative. Constructicons; priority. Repairs; secondary."

"You mean we've got to turn those Earth vehicles into bodies before you'll repair us?" Thundercracker grumbled.

"Affirmative."

"So we're not going back to base?" Skywarp sighed. "All my spares are in my quarters."

"Negative. Further cargo flights: tactically inadvisable."

Skywarp shrugged. Flakes of melted metal fell from the back of his head. "I guess we'd better get started."

 

* * *

 

 

Whiteness, and silence; cold, deep cold, the clasp of ice more biting and more enticing than the dry rigour of the dark vacuum. The kiss of winter is more bitter than the embrace of infinity; the ice is fickle, and keeps not her secrets.

Shades of green and blue impinged upon the pure white oblivion, and a name from the darkness came, bringing remembrance of self. Like a lover awakening in the cold arms of a dead bride, Skyfire twisted and writhed in the solid limbs of ice. Purest white broke into brittle blue splinters, into sea green shards, and the ocean colours sank into the deep-sea blackness of buried memories. His virgin-white bride shattered into pack-ice, and Skyfire arose through seas of consciousness black and barren as a haggard witch. Through the veil of sleep, he espied the dim radiance of a single white star, summoning him back across vast oceans of lost time.

His optics regained power, and warm colours invaded his still retreat, his safe harbour in the ice, but the gravity of his guiding star was too great to be denied. From the ice-hold he flew, into the white light and the painful memories that flocked to its call. He did not attempt to focus his optics, which registered little more than a blur of rust-red and umber that hurt his visual data processor - he wanted only the pale, soothing tones of the winter-lands, the bleached starkness of his refuge. Nor did he touch his aching body with his dead hands; the null-ray left him ice-numb and frozen-fingered.

Skyfire groaned, or perhaps it was simply ice breaking.

"Skyfire."

It was the right voice. Skyfire felt a sensation very strange to him begin inside, something so long ago lost and forgotten that it now seemed quite new - warm, it was, and it spread through every part of him; he called it happiness.

"Starscream," he sighed, and his voice was as thin and as pale as frost. "You have returned for me, from Cybertron." Perhaps it was all a dream, that strange war, that alien conflict filled with mad voices and stinging colour. Perhaps his Starscream had returned for him, to guide him from his bridal bed of bones and broken ice, and lead him once again on dark paths between murmuring stars. His face regained sensation as a warm smile broke the ice. A dream, a dream, it was all a simple dream!

"Consider yourself lucky to be alive," was the reply, and the voice was _wrong_ ; bitter, vicious, needle-sharp - a razor of malice stropped to a killing edge upon the whetstone of war. "You fly like an _idiot_. I see Optimus Prime has neglected to provide you with even the most basic aerial combat training data. Perhaps you should reconsider your decision to betray me, before one of Soundwave's repulsive parasites destroys you because you're such a big, clumsy target that even _they_ can hit you."

The warm glow withered as the witch-bride breathed her spell of white ice upon it, and the smile froze upon his face. The bright, mad dream was real. A thin keening noise echoed around his head, like the cry of freezing water, and he wished for the senseless hands of winterment to entomb his pain in silent ice.

"Did that hurt? It's only the truth, and it's going to get worse, much worse. Even if you don't believe me, time will tell you." Skyfire felt the Decepticon pull out a handful of his components and heard him grind them into powder in his fist. "Emotional dampers, Skyfire? Whatever happened to your objective remove? The Autobots must _really_ value you, Skyfire: deprived of training, armour and feelings too!" The Seeker left him to sit on a rock nearby; sat and watched, and sat and drank energon, and watched, and watched, and watched. Every few minutes, he'd glance at his wrist, as if checking a watch. Memetic behaviour. After all, wasn't his function to observe, to learn and to bring back what could be used? What if he picked up a little pointless body-language here and there ... it added to the flavour. It went in and out of fashion ...

... in and out of fashion.

 _Primus,_ Skyfire thought. _Is that all we were? Purveyors of the latest memes?_

_It must be the null-ray ... must be some side effect ... must be ... not the dampers ... nothing to do with the dampers coming out._

The deep ice over his soul broke. The icebergs of loss and confusion that had first creaked free upon his awakening now rose like snow-pale Aphrodites from some polar Kytherian to drive him from his glacial bride and force him into the dark waters of despair and grief. Skyfire stared at Starscream as the enemy, the Decepticon, merged with the memory, the partner, the light without whom he'd fallen into faithless glacier arms.

"I asked for them," he admitted.

"You specifically asked for a full bank of type-5 dampers? Skyfire, I'm amazed at you." His face twitched, trying to pull into an expression of sadness to which it was long unaccustomed. "I'm appalled."

"Not specifically!" Skyfire insisted, borne upon stormy seas of emotion. "I simply asked for something to stop me from feeling depressed."

"So they damped you. With a full bank of type-5s. Primus, Skyfire, could you feel _anything_ with those in?"

"No. That was the point." Skyfire lowered his gaze. "I didn't want to feel anything." In the embrace of the winter witch, it had been so easy to lie entranced and insensate, a graceless ice sculpture, but now upon storm-wracked seas of Neptune's unfettered wrath, shock-waves of nauseous loss and beating pain drove him south into utter darkness.

"They messed with your brain to stop you missing me." Starscream stated the fact like an accusation. "Did they do that before or after you betrayed me?"

"I am no traitor!"

" _Before or after?_ "

"Before," Skyfire admitted. "Ratchet put a new emotional calibrator in when he was repairing me - after you shot me!"

"An Autobot calibrator? In a neutral nervous system still adjusting to Decepticon upgrades? And you considered yourself sound of judgement after that?"

"Just adding a calibrator didn't make me a traitor."

"Neither did my shooting you. This is a war, you fool," Starscream snapped. "You were a soldier in the Decepticon army and that means _killing Autobots_ \- what did you think was going to happen? Did you think we can afford to take prisoners and spend our energon on maintaining a few more of their worthless miserable lives?" Starscream abruptly halted his tirade. "Don't change the subject! _When_ did you get those dampers?"

"Afterwards," Skyfire said in a small voice that seemed to come from the part of his core still buried in glacial layers. "It was just the calibrator before I ... before I ... "

"Before you _what_? Before you turned your face? Before you betrayed me? Destroyed everything we had? Wrecked our chance to be together again?" Starscream lamented. "What did the Autobots do that made you hate me?"

"I don't hate you!" Skyfire exclaimed, stunned. "I - Starscream, I -"

"You swore you'd stay with me," Starscream reminded him, wounded and wistful. Borne upon wild icebergs, Skyfire looked up at the sky to see one silver star gleaming, guiding, calling him away from the ice and back to the empyrean where he belonged.

"My oath to the Decepticons -"

"I'm not talking about _that_ oath. I'm talking about the other one."

"I ... " He foundered in black water and couldn't find the words. Every time he was alone, it seemed, all the apologies came surging to his vocaliser, waiting to be spoken, but in the here and the now, the words failed him. "I'm sorry. I had to choose between betraying you and betraying myself. I'm not a killer, Starscream, I'm a scientist."

"This is _war_ , Skyfire. You're either a warrior or a memory. You're a scientist - learn war! _I_ did."

"You and I are ... not the same." _You rise free of what tears me down, you see clearly where I am blind ... you are brilliant, and I need your light._

"Right. I'm a Decepticon, and you're a traitor."

"I am an Autobot now."

"You were built neutral, you took the Decepticon oath, then changed your face. No matter which camp you put your foot in, you'll always be a traitor to someone." His expression softened, ever so slightly. "Treachery is life to Decepticons. Come back to us."

"I told you, I'm _not_ a killer."

"If you stay on Earth or go to Cybertron, sooner or later you'll _have_ to kill! Prime will make you if Megatron doesn't!" Starscream shrieked. "Or are you going to run away? Run off into the void, as if the war wasn't happening?"

"I'm not leaving Earth. Not yet, anyway." If he'd had the dampers, he could have left it there. "I'm not leaving Earth while you're still on it." There were a million stars in the sky, but only one had ever left its high vault to fly down into the mortal world, to take a silver body and outshine its stellar siblings with glittering life.

"Why? Do you want to kill me yourself?" Starscream strolled over to Skyfire, leaning over him with white light upon his shoulders and his wings, triumphant as winter, beautiful as a star, terrible as the silver-fingered dawn.

"I - I would never -"

"Prime will make you do it. You know that. He's already made you fight me; stick with the Autobots and he'll make you kill."

"If I was a Decepticon, Megatron would make me kill!"

"Yes, and he wouldn't make you feel ashamed of it! That boron buzzard may have enough cracks in his central processor to play hopscotch on, but he's still a Decepticon at core - and so am I!"

Skyfire looked up into Starscream's silhouette. "You _enjoy_ killing."

"Yes." There was no shame, no attempt to hide that fact. Perhaps even a certain pride. "What did they call me, on Cybertron? What did they say I was?"

"A ... a Seeker." Skyfire felt needles of ice prick his core at that half-forgotten insult.

"A Seeker after knowledge; now, a Seeker after power." He waved airily. "They are, after all, the same things. Didn't we always say that the search for knowledge was the highest cause and that nothing should ever stand in its way?"

"Yes, but we -"

" - we never killed for knowledge. But how many secrets did we leave behind, to die in the darkness, when alien races passed into oblivion? How many times did we feel such anger when some withering organic forbid us from learning the ultimate enigma? How often did you, deep in your core, want to turn back and tear that secret out?"

"I wanted to learn, not to destroy!"

"But the knowledge died, unrecorded, with the xenos! If we had taken it, it would have survived! _We_ are the enduring ones, _we_ are the survivors, we are the ones who deserve to know all the secrets!" He leaned a little closer to whisper, and each word coursed through Skyfire's mind like the descending rays of the Sun upon an iceberg lost in tropic seas. "I have killed for secrets, and killed for power, and killed for the joy of killing, and here is a secret for you - it feels _good_. It is _power_ , it is _glory_ and it is _wonderful_. Murder is the key to all the gates of knowledge we have been barred from, and with the secrets I have learned I have discovered many things." The Seeker crouched down to stroke Skyfire's cheek with a hand as blue as cloudless sky; the fingertips ran through the electromagnetic aura of his face, not touching metal but communicating in their vibrant life the very heat of the soul within. Skyfire felt Starscream's essence so near to his, and knew pain that it was so very far away. "There's only one choice in this war: between standing on the steps of temples to die in ignorant defence of a dying world, or rising as murdering champions and using that secret knowledge to return life to that world. Do you want to see Cybertron rise to glory again, Skyfire? Or do you want to see it _die_?"

_That is the choice? The life of this planet for the life of my homeworld?_

 

* * *

 

_Ugly._

Bonecrusher activated his optics, stared at the rock ceiling high above, and decided it was ugly. Sitting up, he looked around, and saw that the entire cavern was ugly. He looked at himself and saw that he was ugly too. His colours were wrong, his torso was wrong, his limbs were wrong ... everything was ugly, and wrong.

"Easy now, Bonecrusher, take it easy," rasped a harsh voice behind him, and he felt Scrapper's hand on his shoulder.

"This place is disgusting," he grumbled.

"This is Earth, a new colony," the Constructicon foremech replied. Pulling his attention from the hideous irregular ribs of the cavern, Bonecrusher saw now that his fellow Constructicons were ugly too. Ugly colours, ugly bodies, ugly limbs, no doubt ugly alt-modes too. Scrapper sighed; the restraining hand remained on his shoulder. "Yes, it's ugly, but Megatron commands we make it into a temporary base of operations. You'll just have to put up with it for now." He patted the demolitionist reassuringly. "You can wreck it when we're done. Now get yourself together, there's work to be done."

"Some things _never_ change," Bonecrusher replied, looking at his hands; they, at least, were the right shape. Already, the scraped steel of his raw form was gaining tints of colour, and flecks of orange paint rained every time he moved. It would take a few megacycles, but eventually the billions of picotrons would transform him from abraded iron and rusty orange into Cybertronian alloys and Constructicon green.

Resolved, Bonecrusher heaved himself off the operating plinth where he had awakened, and turned in a slow circle to fully survey the cavern.

It was ugly, yes. The rough walls, the uneven floor, the badly-contrived lighting, the irregular and stupidly-placed opening ... he wanted to tear it down, ripping apart rock until the ugliness suddenly vanished in a crash and a bang and a sliding of rubble.

"This place," he decided, "needs demolishing."

"Oh? So it's entirely beyond redemption?" Hook inquired, not looking up from where he was re-wiring his leg.

"It ... it ... " Bonecrusher tried to put into words the sense of the place, struggling to grasp a nebulous concept that hovered, as ever, just beyond his reach. That such a place had, buried beneath the flaws, a high clear beauty and - just perhaps - that beauty could be brought to the surface, if only the flaws and faults could be eradicated. As ever, he could not define that beauty, only see the melee of ugliness that obscured it, and could not tell what was flaw and what was beauty. He could not hold onto the sense, could not express the concept, only stare in dismay as that tentative beauty faded once more into solid wrongness. "It's ugly."

"Have you quite finished admiring the scenery?" rumbled a voice, raw as awakening, harsh as a bloody sunset. Bonecrusher turned around with a start, and for a moment, he didn't recognise the source of the sound; then he knew Megatron.

"You look horrible," Bonecrusher exclaimed thoughtlessly. Megatron's black brows furrowed slightly. The cannon-arm stiffened, just a little, but Megatron's vanity was far from vast and Bonecrusher's tact had ever been less so; the arm relaxed. "Well, you do. I dunno what you turn into now, boss, but you're ugly."

"Too true, too true," Megatron grimaced. "Save the aggression for the Autobots. They look even worse than we do." Then, changing gears as fast as fire consumes dry grass, he continued, "It is good to see the long hekavorns of sleep haven't quietened your anger and thirst for destruction, Bonecrusher. Welcome back." Not knowing quite what to say, Bonecrusher managed a salute, and Megatron left him to confer with what was almost certainly Soundwave who waited patiently at a newly constructed terminal. Bonecrusher decided Soundwave actually looked a little better than before.

 _He's hideous either way,_ the demolitionist thought, _but the new configuration doesn't look as bad as the old one._

"Like he said, you done with the scenery yet?" Long Haul asked, nudging Bonecrusher in the side.

"Why?"

"Scavenger and Mixmaster aren't done yet."

"What's the catch?"

"Scrapper wants us to level the ground and put flooring down while he works on them." Long Haul sighed. It was a very old, very well practised sigh. Bonecrusher regarded the uneven floor of the cavern, strewn with rubble, fragments of clinker and, for some reason, tiny pieces of shrapnel. "Well, we got a choice. Do the floor or fix them." He jerked a thumb over at two ugly mechanisms assembling new terminals. Bonecrusher slowly realised they were Thundercracker and Skywarp.

He finally registered an absence, a sense of something out of proportion; a shadow fell where something had been bright, and made ugly with its ill-defined shape a structure that had been clean-lined and strong.

"Where's Starscream?" Bonecrusher asked.

"Dunno. Someone said he was dead," Long Haul replied indifferently.

"Heard that before," Bonecrusher muttered, looking at the two Seekers. They had that sulky, bitter-lipped look of those who've waited too long for repairs. They looked ready to complain until someone's audios went up in smoke. _Fix two mouthy Seekers or sweep up ..._ Bonecrusher shrugged and turned to Long Haul. "Let's get the floor clean."

 

* * *

 

Time dimmed the pain. Time put the question aside. Time left Skyfire lying dissolute and miserable, all his limbs a-tingle, as the null-ray blasts wore off, and he wrestled to affect the course of the icebergs of emotion he was borne upon. Without the dampers, he was lost and helpless on the pack-ice tide, flowing hither and thither in search of a peaceful place that no longer existed.

He could not run from the war; he could not leave Starscream behind. Even as enemies, they would still know one another's fates, and Skyfire could not turn from his guiding star's light.

He could not rejoin the Decepticons; he could not kill, not even for Starscream. Even as allies, as wingmates, he would still feel the ripping sensation as he betrayed everything that bound his core - his duty as a scientist, an explorer and a teacher, all tossed into the black water and gone forever.

He could not return to the Autobots; he could not fight Starscream, more precious to him than all the lives of Earth. He could not turn from his star guide, his companion in darkness.

His feet were in the ice, and his head turned to the stars, as black water swirled around him. Only in ice was there refuge, the stupefaction of non-sensation, and he longed for the dampers, for the relief of freezing, the embrace of the amnesiac ice-bride.

Most of all, he longed to be buried beneath the polar icecap, where he had lain peace-filled for hekavorns. He wished that there would be a battle there again, as there had been when he awakened, and he could bury himself for the third time - once by accident, once by design, and the third time pays for all. There was his only escape: in the ice.

Starscream fed him energon, and unwelcome heat returned to his limbs. Skyfire groaned, and sighed, and Starscream laughed at him. That sound sent flames of panic eating through his body, for Starscream had never before laughed so cruelly. It was not a laugh of humour, chuckling at his ridiculous moans, but a savage laugh, a torturer cackling over the fine twist of a poisoned blade.

A poisoned icicle.

"Oh, get up, you great clod," Starscream ordered, and laughed again at his feeble response; this laugh was clear as slow-frozen ice, so clear that one can see the black water flowing beneath. The Seeker casually kicked Skyfire's flanks and legs until he pulled himself into a sitting position. Skyfire found he was painfully dented; he had not known Starscream had become so strong.

He sat in a cavern jewelled with radiance. Through wind-chiselled slits in the rock, curtains of light hung airy and bright, suspending numinous tapestries of colour between luminous rich-red walls. The light glowed with the stone's strong ochres and oranges, siennas and umbers, reds and browns and deep autumn colours; with the soft amethysts and pale sapphires of Decepticon metal, shot through with lapis lazuli and citron, emerald and ambers, chalcedony and sunstones from machine displays - translucent gems set in fiery white-gold - and through these drifting bright gossamer gauzes Starscream moved. He glittered so fiercely Skyfire was in awe to behold him - a platinum god-figure armoured in garnet and sardonyx, helmed in jet, his optics nova rubies that contained the fire of young suns, sapphire-fingered and with diamonds at his throat, diamonds at his shoulders, diamonds, diamonds, a riot of star-like diamonds! Skyfire felt his fuel-pump stop for a moment to grace with silence such a Faberge creation, the last of the day's illumination casting itself upon him in abandoned adoration, his Starscream revealed in full splendour, a living star gleaming with all the heavens arrayed upon his body.

He looked upon Starscream - silver prince armoured in white jewels, too lofty for base earth, too fierce in fire and too proud for mortal hands to bear to touch, so hot, so cold, so fierce, so far away - and his optics saw what the eyes of his soul had long beheld.

 _Prime wants me to shoot_ him _?_ Skyfire wondered, and was ashamed of the very thought. Trembling and afraid, he realised that he cared for Starscream as deeply as he had ever done; ice slips and slides and lasts not long, but stars burn out of time in eternal night, and Starscream was a star whose radiance was undimmed by the passing aeons but that it grew stronger and waxed brighter, until his brightness filled the night and refracted upon the ice, glittering in a thousand reflections upon the black sea. Skyfire looked into the tidal abyss and saw only a broken mirror filled with memories of starlight. Even in the burning days of war, even changed from explorer of civilisations to ravisher of worlds, even wicked and vicious as a killing blade, Starscream could, with a glance, with a glimmer of that awesome radiance, that light of halcyon days and past now gone from grasp, command and rule him; mind, core and spark.

The star-prince descended to earth, the blazing diamonds winking out one by one as he descended from celestial light to grace his lost companion with a smile as cold and sharp as a star, a diamond, a blade of silver and poison and ice.

"You never told me why you wanted a closer look at this planet," Starscream said conversationally, perching on a rock hewn into a rough seat, as if he could reach back through the time his brightness spanned and snatch up a handful of what had once been. He sat at Skyfire's side, and now their optics were level. Skyfire looked into those ruby crystals, so full of life and fire, so alien and so familiar, and all his ice melted, leaving him naked and afraid. "Well?"

"Oh ... I ... some topographic scans of the southern hemisphere indicated there might be a submarine city. I ... I suppose I was wrong."

Starscream leaned back against the warm rock and settled, like mercury moulded into vital form, his aching brightness dimmed to starlit silver, all long limbs and sharp wings, optics half-closed. Skyfire realised his ex-partner had consumed a considerable amount of energon and was warmly over-energised. "Shock of a time to make a mistake like that, 'fire," he laughed.

"I suppose it was," Skyfire smiled ruefully, trembling upon the edge of flight, as if this sudden respite from the haggard winter-pain was a prelude to a second spring of what had been, filled with star-light out of time. "But I was so sure at the time ... have you done any topographic surveys in the twelfth sector of the southern hemisphere?"

Starscream laughed again, tipping his head back, and the sunlight stroked him with a brilliant hand. Skyfire felt exquisite pain to look upon his beautiful face, radiant with life: his very soul screamed in agonies of division, torn between betraying himself and the one who filled the world with light. "I haven't done a real topographic survey for a megavorn! I haven't had the time ... or the reason."

"Doesn't it bother you? Not doing what you're built for?"

Starscream, still laughing, reached out and rapped him firmly on the forehead with his knuckles. "I am doing what I was built for, you lug-nut. I'm a Decepticon; I was built to conquer worlds."

"But you're also a scientist."

Starscream shrugged, still smiling like the crescent moon; frosty comets glittered in his optics. "I've been a homeless wretch, a scientist, a celebrity, a politician, a warrior and a general. I'm a Decepticon. I change, adapt and survive."

"But you were built neutral."

Starscream's smile inverted into a displeased frown. He rapped Skyfire on the forehead again, rather more sharply. "Debug your memory banks, Skyfire, you know as well as I do I was built a Decepticon."

"Ah, yes," Skyfire sighed. "When one spends so long telling a lie, it starts to taste like the truth."

"I suppose you _can_ still remember the truth."

"Yes," Skyfire smiled. "It was rather memorable."

"Not to mention painful."

"Well, you were in an awful state ... "

"I was falling off the top of a five-hundred-storey building!"

"Falling?" Skyfire exclaimed darkly.

"Well, I certainly wasn't _flying_ ," Starscream replied sulkily.

"It was a long time ago," Skyfire soothed. "And nobody else knows."

"Soundwave might," Starscream replied with venom. "You never can tell how much he knows - Megatron and I found a way to shield parts of our minds from him, but there's no telling how much he found out before we got the blocks in place. _If_ he knows then there's no knowing if he's told anyone else, or if Megatron knows ... or if he's told Megatron some warped version of events, or lied to him completely."

"Such a friendly group of individuals," Skyfire commented, in a mock-professorial tone. "Trust obviously plays a strong factor in social relationships."

" _Lack_ of trust, you mean," Starscream laughed. "I don't trust any of them, and none of them trust me, or each other. Megatron's mad, Shockwave is madder and Soundwave's scum."

Skyfire looked away from his ex-companion. "The Autobots say you are mad."

"Me?" Starscream laughed even more loudly. Skyfire wondered at such outbursts of merriment, suspecting he had little cause for joy nowadays.

_On the other hand, it could just be the energon getting to him._

He did not dare listen to the murmur in his core that sighed perhaps, just perhaps, Starscream's happiness was caused by his own nearness.

"Oh, I _know_ they think I'm mad," Starscream chuckled. "Any Decepticon who looks for a life beyond being a security guard or a paper-pushing statistical sop they call mad. I'm certain they think I'm completely insane." Then he turned quiet. "I was mad, for a while. We've all been mad: Megatron, me, Shockwave, Soundwave, most of the lesser generals. It comes and goes, for all of us. It comes with the power. It's horrible and wonderful, all at the same time, and it makes you even stronger ... but at the same time, it hurts you, right down in your core."

"I am certain that you are quite sane," Skyfire replied softly.

Starscream leaned closer, and, in a voice no more than a whisper, almost lost in the shifting of sands, he tore open his armoured heart and poured out a megavorn of longing and loss; " _I missed you_."

Skyfire was struck dumb, shaken to the foundations of his soul and in terror of his own feelings that flew in warm response to those words. Starlight filled the sky, lit the sea and cracked the ice; gravity outmatched denial and drew him inexorably towards the heart of the light.

It seemed then that the energon that fuelled Starscream's ebullient openness was exhausted, and quite unthinkingly the Seeker leaned against Skyfire, slowly falling into recharge as if the past megavorn had never happened, and they were just sitting in some cave on some far-flung planet and talking over the day's work. Skyfire, feeling a hook of poignant longing drag itself slowly through his soul and tear out most of the soft parts, did just as he had done the last time they'd sat like this, and he gently put his hand on Starscream's side, just there, just to keep him ... keep him safe?

Skyfire looked down at his somnolent sometime-companion, the low-gleaming silver statue slumbering in the shelter of his arm, whom he'd seen - so it seemed - only two or three times in the last diun, and it seemed like an agony of a long time to be apart. He was so used to Starscream being there, always flying at his side as they navigated from planet to planet, always being there on the radio as they explored new worlds - that bright voice in the darkness between the stars, that one thread of sentience in the eternal void, his only company of decivorns - that his absence was like having a chunk of his soul cut out and sunk in black waters.

How had it been for Starscream, he wondered, when he had to fly back to Cybertron all alone? How had he coped? How had he lasted through the death of peace and the birth of war?

_I missed you._

How would they cope now? Before it had been hard - hard to be Starscream's enemy, hard to hear that ugly word "traitor," and know it was all wrong and yet that it was right, because he'd promised Starscream, hadn't he? Hadn't he promised they were going to be together forever?

_I missed you._

Skyfire sighed and allowed his thumb to gently stroke Starscream's shoulder. It didn't help that Starscream's response was a drowsy murmur of contentment.

 _This is how it was meant to be, and can never be again,_ he realised, and soft as snowflakes pattering on snow-banks, he crooned a mourning song of loss and loneliness, a keening, wailing, bone-scraping shiver of sound that rose and entwined with star-light like the milk-white hands of lovers parting forever.

_I miss you too._

 

* * *

 

Ravage raced the dawn.

 _How has it come to this?_ he thought as he doubled in supple arcs across sandy stretches of pre-dawn desert. _Twelve megacycles ago Skywarp was supposed to rendezvous with me - where was he? Why have I been kept waiting?_ Even as he cleft a clean line through dust and dirt, the maw of his mind gnawed on the foul gristle of doubt. _A mission was planned, but not a battle! What has happened? Where are they all? Has Megatron been damaged?_ Like dust that crept up between toes, worked into joints and itched in his internals, uncertainties nagged and worried at his brain. _Twelve megacycles I wait, and still no news!_ Only when he slunk, bitten by thirst, back into the Ark to steal fuel did he learn of the construction vehicle raid and the battle, but details were short and time was shorter. _What for did he want those Earth-hulks? To make body-shells? Then time is short, for not a night does that take!_

It had been little work to sort through the sites he and his avian comrades had reconnoitred recently, and to select the location he thought most likely to be the new base. _More than a megavorn now I serve him, and I know his mind - that is the place, but time is so short! They have worked a night and at sunrise they will fly - that is his way, and I must hurry, or else he will look upon me displeased. He will see me a time-waster, a fool, not fit to walk in his shadow! I must_ run _!_ His Earthen form was maladapted to flight, the base was almost five hundred miles away and already pale fingers of light were tugging stars from the sky.

The desert streamed past in a blur of scrub and dust. The moon lowered a finger of silver to point him out, as if it had never seen such a run. Ravage's back bent in willow curves and arches, now stretching out all paws flung far, now doubling in greyhound posture, a cheetah-shadow freed of gross flesh to outrace the rising of the Sun. His paw-prints lay in clotted blots parted by long strides, punctured by claw-marks on rough rock rises, dappled where he dashed through streams and littered with wreckage where some feeble fence might bar his path.

Pounding in ripple beats he swept across the dawning land in a stream of sand that skywards spun, a jet-stream column heel-kicked high. Forepaw, hindpaw, stretch, forepaws pull ground and hindpaws thrust down, stretch again, floating in flight a leg-span above dirt. His spinal structure cracked whip-like as he bowed in obsidian curves and flung in jet lengths, a night-spat dart streaming fluid across ashen land. As a bolt from some dark bow he mimicked his launching in the bending and flexing of his back, echoing in the pulse of powerful shoulders the stretch and pull of the archer, and each kick of hind-limbs was like unto the leap of arrow from the bent bow.

With power and with fervour he beat the ground, splayed toes digging deep the dirt and hurling himself into each long leap, boomerang curves of back returning him to his master. With great heart and greater stride, he forced ever faster the pace, as the golden hair of dawn floated gleaming in the sky, even though it seemed his limbs would crack, and his fuel-pump beat in pacing rhythm with his breaking paws.

The Sun rose from its night-cradle of cold stone and lifted its gilded aura above the horizon, casting down light in surprise at the doubled-up darting of the swift black cat, who stumbled when the auric eye-bright shot through his head. He did not falter in his stride but pressed harder against the barrier of fate and time and threw himself headlong towards his lord and master.

Already he could hear the siren-song of radio and bond-talk, the soothing cacophony of Megatron, Seekers, Soundwave and his cassette-kin, and new voices besides. Flinging himself into a last desperate dash he pelted hell-mell over red land, long grey legs scissoring the sand, and saw them rise into the dewy sky.

Filled with the joy of homecoming, he forgot his aching joints and empty tanks, and threw himself into such a sprint as to outpace them, to carve a red path between their fluttering shadows like a lion through a zebra herd, and when those shadows cleaved from him, he knew they saw him. He did not falter, but still his stride grew longer, as if his legs grew longer, as if his shoulders grew stronger, as if his back grew suppler, and still he ran faster, chasing black jet shadows and stippled shapes, stunted shrubs bursting upon his neck and sunlight glittering on his fangs.

For a moment it seemed that all his life was this race, this sudden burst of speed across a fruitless land for the saving of face, the stealing of grace and the taste of victory as the rising Sun cast his master's shadow across him. He heard Megatron laugh on high, and praise his effort, and knew he had done well. Now, limbs turned to lead with tiredness, he slowed, and slumped, and sank to his belly in the sand. There he waited, exhausted and empty but for the aftertaste of victory, until Soundwave swept down to envelop him in warm dark safety, and hurry him homewards to give his badly delayed report.

The Sun rose again from darkness and began once more its rise towards high heaven and full splendour, but in the darkness, the panther smiled.

Ravage raced the dawn, and won.

 

* * *

 

The first light of dawn rekindled the veils of light in Starscream's jewelled chamber, and Skyfire felt the awakening Sun lay a slender palm upon his forehead, as if bidding him to rise with it.

He felt Starscream awaken at his side, and listened, with a strange detachment, as the Seeker ... the warrior, the murderer, the destroyer ... his old friend sighed, and was still, just for one perfect moment, in utter calm and silence. Once again, that cruel hook snagged Skyfire's soul, and once again, it ripped him into pieces; he knew that they were saying goodbye.

"Stormhangar," Skyfire said aloud. "You should call this place Stormhangar. A shelter from the tempest."

"You've been awake all night," Starscream mumbled, not raising the proptovenes from his optics.

"I needed to think."

Gradually, the shields rose a little, and sly scythes of blood-red light cut his throat, stilling the words he had spent all the dark hours preparing.

"You're going to go back, aren't you?" Starscream sighed, sitting up, out of Skyfire's embrace. Skyfire felt suddenly, terribly cold and alone.

"Yes," he said, trying to be resolute but sounding - to his own audios - stupid and stubborn. "I ... I can't be a Decepticon. Not even for you."

"Well, don't expect me to become an Autobot!" was the sharp retort. Starscream hopped down off his rock and strode up to the machinery, passing through filmy curtains of light. In their pale hands, he strobed, he glowed, he glittered and flashed - star, prince, murderer and back again - and Skyfire's misery grew into an iceberg that rested on his shoulders.

"Couldn't we both be neutrals again?" he faltered.

"Again?" Starscream pivoted, sharp as a knife, and laughed harshly. "I was never a neutral, I just scraped the faces off my wings to get in the academy doors." His tone darkened. "You _know_ that."

"You pretended," Skyfire replied mournfully. "Couldn't you pretend again?"

"No." Flat, firm refusal, hard as rock. "I had a reason to pretend, that long time ago, but now I have a greater destiny."

"It was barely a diun ago ... " Skyfire sighed hopelessly. Once again his soul refused to accept what all his senses told him; that the Starscream he had known was gone, long gone, and this diamond blade, this poison icicle, fuelled by violent ambition and talking about Cybertron as if it was a different planet from the one he'd left, oh, four vorns ago, this person was Starscream. Miserybergs sat upon Skyfire's shoulders, and albatross grief hung around his neck.

"One megavorn," Starscream reminded him. "One million years of Cybertron, give or take a few decivorns." He looked away, and his arms trembled. "I ought to kill you now," he shuddered, "and no Decepticon in my place would do otherwise, but I've been a general too long to give up this easily." He raised his head and transfixed Skyfire with a gaze that incinerated all hope of icy peace. "Try and survive this war, Skyfire. If you can live through the next vorn or so, you'll see - you'll know - you've made the wrong choice. I can tell you this is a war until my vocaliser overloads, but only when you've seen the fighting at its filthiest, seen the hours at their darkest, seen true War as it has not yet come to Earth, only then will you understand that the morality the Autobots cling to is nothing more than their last bastion against the realisation that they are no better, no cleaner, no purer and no more graced in the optics of Primus than we Decepticons!"

"I don't want to let you go," Skyfire replied mournfully. Starscream shielded his optics and turned away, and Skyfire saw how torn he was. "You don't have to stay on Earth, Starscream. You ... we could leave together. Explore. Do what we were built to do."

"Yes ... what we were built to do ... seek, learn, and bring back. How could we seek and learn when this is what we would be returning to?" He gestured vaguely into the glowing air, as if it encompassed all the death and brightness of war. "I won't leave. The Decepticons need me."

" _I_ need you," Skyfire insisted.

"No you _don't_!" Starscream howled. "You need the person I used to be, and he's _dead_. _Dead_. Time makes all things possible; I've _changed_. Just go away, Skyfire. Take your memories of Starscream and leave. The Starscream you remember is long dead. Don't think of me as him; just think of me as someone who's got the same name as someone you used to know."

_The same person who slept at my side last night._

Starscream paused, optics lit with fervour. "Remember ... the mountains on the fourth moon of Eid?" His voice softened, wistful again, another glimpse of the still-same soul behind the envenomed tongue and spite-flaming optics.

"We watched the sun setting in the methane clouds," Skyfire smiled weakly. "You told me how you felt you were looking for something ... how you felt there was a hole inside you that could never be filled ... and that it was your destiny to seek until you found what was missing."

"I found it. It's called being a Decepticon." Martial bearing crushed the hint of past friendship, but still beneath the imperious expression, the face was the same. "I found what I was looking for - a piece of myself the Autobots stole when they made Decepticons into outcasts. I _am_ a Decepticon, and I don't need to search anymore."

Skyfire realised he had never had a chance to pull his star from the heavens to join him on his dark voyages. His star was firmly affixed in a constellation of power, and waxing greater every day, seeking to burst into full splendour and outshine the tyrant Sun himself.

"Today I am an exile," said the proud star, "but one day soon, I will return and take what is mine - my place, my power, and my destiny - and if I have to fight every Autobot, Decepticon and neutral on Earth, Cybertron and the lost colonies, so be it! Whatever happens, I'll live as what I am - a Decepticon, and proud of it! Starscream the neutral is dead, for he never existed. There is only he who always was: _Starscream the Decepticon_!"

Skyfire opened his mouth to protest, to argue, to scream in soul-pain, but Starscream struck him with a null-ray, a sceptre of chilling light, and everything lightened into the familiar, welcoming embrace of the mute ice-bride.

Whiteness, and silence; home again.

 

* * *

 

"So, the Autobots had recovered our fallen comrades," Megatron mused aloud, after Ravage had finished his report. "We will have to ensure their liberation is swift. Prime might take it into his foolish head to have them reprogrammed with Autobot logic protocols."

Sidewinder was acutely silent on the matter.

"We will require a diversion," Megatron continued, talking mostly to himself. As he spoke, he paced up and down the command chamber. Sidewinder busied himself pretending to admire the racks of melee weapons on the wall. Soundwave stood still and impassive as a statue. "Something to draw the Autobots away from their base in sufficient numbers for a raiding party to successfully extract our warriors. Hmm, we'll only get one chance at this; if the Autobots realise we know of the fallen ones, they will hide them more securely, or even shoot them into space. Now, what could keep all the Autobots occupied ... " Megatron trailed into silent thought, ceasing his pacing at the weapon racks. Almost absentmindedly, he lifted a great golden scimitar from its wall-hooks and tested the edge against his hand. It was an old weapon, of good material and well-kept, although by no means the most powerful of those hung about him.

The sword was more than half Megatron's height in length. The blade curved gently upwards from hilt to vicious tip, and a full third of the back of the blade was raised in a cutting edge. It was a heavy weapon, designed for two-handed wielding, though Megatron, in his strength and stature, found one hand alone would suffice. The edge bespoke the long-ago hewing of Autobot necks and the cleaving of Autobot bodies in notching that had retired it from battle to sparring.

"Reminder; Dinobots," Soundwave intoned.

"Those lumbering brutes ... " Half his mind still pondering heavier matters, Megatron swung the blade in testing arcs, causing the edge to hum eagerly. His hand was not suited to the sword; the unbroken strength of his chest and arms were adroit with mace and hammer and axe. He handled swords with skill, but could not put his whole strength behind them, for the blades would break. The sword itself was not a good weapon; it was too long for its type and heavy for its make, and neither flaw aided its imperfect edge and weak energy field; all that was in the weapon's favour was its excellent balance. "The Autobots won't let them out of the Ark for anything less than a full-scale assault ... and their presence on the battlefield would leave us at a tactical disadvantage."

"But we're Decepticons!" Sidewinder protested. "Why should we be afraid of a few lumbering dolts?"

"Because those lumbering dolts can easily rip your limbs off," Megatron replied absently, slashing thoughtfully at the air. "No, an assault is out of the question." He had only kept the weapon for the sake of sheer irony. The last Overlord had presented it to him as champion gladiator of Cybertron, and that the last ruler of a unified Cybertron should hand to the next a weapon of war so soon before passing away amused him deeply. "Sidewinder," he ordered, "Pick a weapon."

"Recommend; utilise Constructicon abilities," Soundwave continued, as the Seeker scanned the weapon-racks. He was startled by the order, afraid for his life, but was neither foolish nor brave enough to protest.

"Yes, the Autobots won't expect them. They won't be ready to compensate for their skills ... nor their special attack."

 _Their what?_ the expression on Sidewinder's face read clearly, his hand falling back from the weapon racks. He had passed over the traditional Seeker gladiatorial gear - the ankle-blade and carpal whip and the short shield - and now took a simple, straight-bladed energy-sword from the wall-racks. Megatron found a smile of anticipation creeping to his facial input-output module, and his thoughts became clear.

"Now," he commanded, swinging the scimitar up. "Attack me!" Sidewinder's optics widened as his baffled systems attempted to obtain a more detailed view of his situation; his guard dropped as his nerve failed. Megatron lowered his blade and favoured the Seeker with a disapproving look. "Have you forgotten how to spar, Sidewinder?"

"N-no, sir!" Sidewinder sounded obviously relieved, and drew himself into a ready stance at last. Waiting for no further distraction, Megatron charged. Sidewinder drew the blade up for a horizontal stab at his neck, and Megatron swung the scimitar up to slice at his wrists. Starscream, he knew, could counter that move; Sidewinder, apparently, could not, for the dull blade struck him fully on the wrist-joint, and he dropped his sword. Megatron perfunctorily swept the Seeker's legs from under him with the flat of the blade, and pressed the tip of the scimitar to his throat.

"Poor, Sidewinder, very poor," he said, as the half-formed germ-seed of a plan began to wither in his mind. "Pick up your weapon and try again."

The Seeker did as he was bid, and fell into the same stance, which Megatron took a moment of surprise over, before remembering that Sidewinder had not travelled anywhere near as extensively as Starscream, and did not know many hundreds of xenos fighting styles.

Again, Megatron charged. Sidewinder saw his incoming stroke and blocked it; the impact of blade on blade drove the Seeker to his knees, the burning cross of swords pressed close to his forehead. Megatron waited half a second, anticipating that the Seeker would break contact, side-step as he rose, and bring his blade up to strike for his chest or face; but Sidewinder was not Starscream, had not his quickness of wit nor hand, and made no move in time. Megatron turned the scimitar, letting it slide down Sidewinder's sword, then swiftly swept it back, striking Sidewinder beneath his costal armour and sweeping him across the room, where it was the work of moments to place the scimitar-tip to his throat.

To his credit, the Seeker did not drop his sword this time.

"You're improving," Megatron begrudged, letting him up. "We must take care not to put ourselves in a place where all the Autobot guns will be upon us. They have us at a numerical disadvantage, and we cannot afford to take many injuries. You still need more practice."

"But we're more than capable of fighting three Autobots apiece!" Sidewinder protested, nursing the smouldering cut in his side as he got up.

"Three ordinary Autobots, yes," Megatron rumbled, as they faced off for the third time. "But Prime's crew are the elite of the Autobot army, and some amongst them are a match for a Seeker. Open war is something in which we can no longer afford to engage. What we cannot take with force, we must acquire with guile."

Again, Megatron found himself anticipating Starscream's sharp-tongued response, but what he received was Sidewinder's first attack, as the Seeker drove forwards with a horizontal stab for his throat. Megatron slashed the scimitar up, knocking the blow away, and Sidewinder whirled on his pedes, bringing the sword right around and down from his right shoulder. Megatron reversed his swing and countered the strike; the blades drew a fiery X at knee-height. Sidewinder quickly broke the lock, and took a third stab for Megatron's throat. Annoyed, Megatron swatted the strike away with his hand.

"Try another attack," he ordered. "That one's getting old."

Sidewinder backed off a pace. Already, his face and wrists were beginning to glow with excess heat, and his aspiration rate had risen by almost ten percent. Megatron considered giving up the fight and choosing a new sparring partner; swiftly considering his options, he chose to stick with Sidewinder, who now attacked with a simple downward slice. Megatron parried easily; as the blades met, he put his weight into the swing and Sidewinder tilted off-balance. He stumbled, and Megatron kicked his leg aside. Sidewinder tumbled flat on his face.

"Come _on_ ," Megatron grumbled, thinking about the Dinobots and Optimus Prime's reluctance to release them from the Ark. "Is that the best you can do?"

"I'm not very good with swords," Sidewinder replied, getting up.

"Get better," Megatron ordered. His back was to the Seeker, who took a low flat swing at him, yet he turned and countered the strike more quickly than most would allow possible. He drove the Seeker's blade down, but Sidewinder drew aside quickly, and they passed chest-to-back. Megatron pivoted in mid-step, bringing his scimitar up into guard. Starscream would have struck for his back, but Sidewinder did not see the chance. The Seeker's next strike came down from his right shoulder, and was blocked at chest-height. Quick as he could, Sidewinder drew back and stabbed beneath Megatron's guard, but the leader brought his scimitar down equally fast and the strike was foiled.

Strike, block, strike, feint ... the swoop of blades formed a pattern in Megatron's mind, and the pattern was strong. With a round swing of his sword, Megatron drove Sidewinder's guard open, then struck swiftly between his right arm and sword, plunging the tip against the white flank of his opponent, who buckled to shield himself; drawing the sword back, he raised it high and struck down upon the Seeker's head.

In the instant before contact, Megatron was aware of Soundwave, watching, alert and tense. The pattern became a plan, and the plan was good.

The golden blade crackled a nanospan from Sidewinder's cranial armour.

Megatron drew back the blade and rested it. Sidewinder exhaled gustily, mimicking a burst of turbulent wind, a Seeker-sign for the passing of a sudden surprise.

"A ruse," Megatron rumbled contentedly, returning the scimitar to its place. "I will challenge Optimus Prime to single combat, in accordance with the old law, with the ownership of the Earth as a prize. He won't be able to resist _that_ , and all his foolish followers will stand and watch. How ironic, that they should sit and watch their leader fall in same arena that they used to winnow out our weakest before the war."

"But what if he wins? We'd be banished," Sidewinder asked tremulously, powering down his sword and replacing it on the wall.

"You expect _me_ to loose?" Megatron growled. "I am the most powerful warrior in the universe! And we're Decepticons, you fool! We honour no pact! Soundwave - summon Scrapper. I don't intend to pass up an opportunity to destroy that snivelling righteous Auto-bucket."

"Won't Prime expect betrayal?" Sidewinder fumbled.

"Idiot! Prime views the universe through the sentimental optic sensors of a female Autobot! He thinks we all have honourable warrior souls deep inside, the fool! Now, get _out_!" Megatron turned his back on the rejected Seeker. "Prime will expect _some_ treachery, and leave the Dinobots on alert ... he will anticipate a strike at the Ark, and if he sees any of our warriors missing ... the Constructicons can hold them, but I doubt they will be able to fight off those brutes and retrieve the fallen ... perhaps a drone force ... but the energy needed ... "

Megatron's thoughts fell into silence, and he brooded upon them as the injured Seeker limped away. Soundwave lingered for a moment, then followed, leaving Megatron to nurse his wounds: the deep bleeding thorn-gash in his side, and the stinging whip-lash across his pride.

 

* * *

 

Sidewinder hurt. His flank smouldered, his costal armour oozed molten metal, his shin was dented where Megatron had kicked him, his arms ached from fingertip to shoulder-joint from the jarring strength of Megatron's blows and his legs ached from being driven to his knees.

 _He was_ playing _with me,_ he thought bitterly. _He wasn't even paying attention to what I was doing. He just wanted something to do with his hands while he was thinking!_ A flurry of sparks erupted from his side.

"Halt." The tonal command behind him brought a sigh to Sidewinder's lips. He stopped and turned to face Soundwave. In the crystal plate of the cassette-host's chest, Sidewinder saw himself reflected, overheated and scuffed. There was a scorched line on his head where Megatron's blade had almost cracked him open. "Performance: inadequate."

"I'm not a melee fighter; I'm a Seeker," Sidewinder protested. The gash in his costal armour ceased oozing, but the stab-wound to his flank was still hot and sore. "In fact, I'm an _artillery jet_."

"Acquire expertise," Soundwave ordered coldly. "Emulate his technique."

"He's twice as strong as I am," Sidewinder hissed. "He could've had my head off at any moment!"

"Irrelevant. Instruction: ingratiate yourself to him. Continued failure to please will result in irreparable disfavour. Outcome: ruination."

"Why should you care?" Sidewinder asked. Soundwave paused before answering, perhaps checking the area with his array of sensors.

"Profile indicates potential to permanently replace Starscream." Soundwave's visor flickered dimly, and the low hum of his electromagnetic aura become denser, more hostile. "Better for the Decepticons."

"Better for you?"

"Better for us all." The hostility gained a degree. "Starscream: dangerous; insane; distracts Megatron. Instruction: replace him. Outcome: stability."

"Well, I'm trying! Megatron isn't exactly making it easy."

"Megatron does not want Starscream replaced," Soundwave replied, faint traces of weariness poisoning his monotone. "Too much history. Too much invested. Instruction: impress Megatron; make Starscream redundant. Focus on loyalty, efficiency. Do not argue. Do not answer back. Do not contradict. Obey every command with enthusiasm." The cassette-host moved forwards, crowding Sidewinder. "Imperative: succeed at all costs. Price of failure: too high."

"For us?"

"For you."

Digesting this, Sidewinder collected his scattered thoughts enough to sneer, "Yeah?" He moved in on Soundwave, refusing to cow before the cassette-host. He jabbed a finger in the crystal chest, and Soundwave recoiled sharply. "I don't take orders from techs, I don't take threats from symbionts, and I sure as Primus don't take 'instructions' from _youeurgh_!"

Soundwave relaxed his grip on Sidewinder's neck just enough to let fuel flow to his sensor nexus, feeling the fuel-pulse throb between his fingers.

 _[Silence,]_ the cassette-host ordered, the tight-beam communication thundering on every frequency band, filling Sidewinder's head with pounding sound. _[Order: follow instructions.]_

"Or what?" Sidewinder gasped.

_[Alternative: punishment. Example: a sample.]_

Sidewinder's mind filled with cacophony, intense stabbing pains hacking through his audio sensors, his gyros twirling madly, his optics blurring. Audio disruptor waves battered his sensors, tossing him into a confused and surging world of mad echoes and distortion. It seemed to last for megacycles, the tearing, beating noise-pain, until Soundwave swallowed sound in silence, and let him fall.

On his knees and beaten, fuel back-surging in cramped lines, Sidewinder spluttered, "All right, all right! I'll do what you say." The cassette-host spared him a cold glance before turning and leaving him with the hollow mockery of a voice resounding in his mind:

_[You never had any other choice.]_

 

* * *

 

_Now for the awful part._

Softened by pastel hints of dawn, the Ark nuzzled comfortably into the warm embrace of the earth. Skyfire stood at the main entrance, still aching with fatigue and the tingly numbness of fading null-ray blasts. He had awoken in the desert, bereft of companion and comfort, and crawled, then staggered, then walked back to the Ark.

He has rejected me, he thought, and knew it was not the whole truth. He had rejected Starscream as much as Starscream had rejected him, and the rejection was not final. _He will keep the door open for me, until there is no alternative but to slam it in my face, and lock it, and hurl the key away._

_And now I must walk into the Ark and explain where I have been all night. And nothing I say will convince them that, in some soft way, I am not a traitor._

He bowed his head, so as not to see the Sun's bright fingers snuffing out the stars, and the weight of grief about his shoulders nearly drove him to his knees. As he re-entered the Ark, his usual gung-ho facade failed to appear. His mask was broken, and all he could muster to cover his naked misery was a defensive hunch that only enhanced his visible pain.

Just as he thought he might get to his quarters without incident, it happened - the inevitable. Optimus Prime. Standing in the middle of the corridor.

 _He knows,_ Skyfire realised. _I was gone all night, and he knows why._

"Good morning, Skyfire," Prime greeted him politely, with only the faintest undertone of steely disapproval. "I'd like to talk to you for a minute. If you're not too busy."

Skyfire felt as if he was frozen again. Wished he were frozen again. Wished it was all an ice dream, wished to Primus that this reality made from slices of nightmare knotted up with loss was only the mad dream of a broken mechanism buried in ice.

Wished that Starscream, his Starscream, his white star, was any minute going to free him from the ice, and the nightmare would end, and everything would be _perfect_ again.

_Please, Primus let this be only a dream!_

When he went into his quarters, Prime was still behind him.

"I hate to sound accusatory, Skyfire, but where were you last night?"

"I was with Starscream." _As you fully know._

"I see."

"Do you." Skyfire looked down at Prime, and remembered breaking his oath to Starscream, remembered the shock in Megatron's optics as he was picked up and hurled aside like a toy, all to save this equally toy-like mechanism whom he was beginning to believe was just as monomaniacal and just as destructive as Megatron himself. "Tell me, Prime, what do you see? Because I'm not sure anymore."

"Skyfire, calm down," Prime hushed gently, holding his hands up in placation. "I'm truly sorry to have to pry into your private affairs, but I must know how much of a risk you are to security."

"Is that all I am?" Skyfire stared blankly at the wall, all the loss inside him threatening to burst out in an ice-storm of grief. "A possible security risk? I ... I risked my life chasing him down. You sent me, a scientist, a neophyte to this cult of destruction, after him, the chief of the air warriors. Had he been anyone else, he would have killed me. Just because we were once partners, he spared my life, just as he spared my life in Antarctica, and again in Peru." His voice was trembling, his optics unfocused. He clenched his hands, trying to throttle the grieving voice within. "Just for one night, he gave me back what I lost a diun ago - a single diun, Prime, I've been here barely a diun, how can I fight this war? How can I fight _him?_ A diun ago he was my partner, and now he is a stranger!"

"It must be hard for you to adjust to the changes," Prime attempted to console him.

"I can handle change," Skyfire snapped. "I am an explorer. Dealing with new situations is a part of my function. The change is not the problem."

"Then what is the problem?" Prime folded his arms and leant on the workstation, very clearly not leaving without an answer. Skyfire's mind chased itself in circles, tighter and tighter until he felt he would burst if he didn't let the dilemma out.

The one to whom he wished to speak was white and red and blue also, but had no upthrust thorny horns, only angelic stellar wings.

"It's ... hard to explain," he began. Prime nodded. "Before the war ... Starscream ... he was the closest friend I've ever had. Now, to hear the others talking about him as if he was some kind of monster ... I remember who he was before the war, and despite all that has changed, he is still my Starscream." He hadn't meant to put it that way. Prime's optics flashed in alarm at the possessive term. "Yes, I said _my_ Starscream. We were very close."

"How close?" Prime asked, not voicing his true question; _close enough to be a danger to us?_

"We were _explorers_ , Prime. We travelled alone between the stars. You can't understand unless you've been there yourself. It took years, sometimes vorns, for us to cross the interstellar gulfs, and we were _alone_ , with only one another's voices to break the silence. We guided each another, talked, kept each other sane. For decivorns of my life, the universe was made of three things: the void, Starscream and myself. Nothing else. On alien worlds, we had only each other to turn to for familiarity and for comfort. When Cybertron was far away, he was my home, and when we flew in space, he was my guiding star." Skyfire paused, trying to sort the surges of emotion within. Prime waited silently, perhaps shocked, perhaps understanding. "Of the eighteen decivorns I have lived, twelve I have spent alone with Starscream ... and I regret not a moment of it. Before this, I would have given up everything I had for him, and now - now my wealth, my position and my world are gone - I am a stranger in this war, and _he is all I have left_! All I remember, all I was, all that I lived and dreamed - only his existence tells me that I am not living in a mad dream of another universe!"

Prime watched with sad and silent sky-blue optics and waited.

Skyfire continued, "I was listening when Ironhide congratulated Bluestreak for shooting Starscream. For an Autobot, it was the right thing to do. To me, it was a crime, even a personal attack. I ... I am standing upon the edge of a knife, and I will fall soon. Every time I strike against the Decepticons, I am striking against Starscream, and that's striking against the part of my life that means the most to me. Almost as if every wound he suffers is a wound upon my own body.

"And yet ... and yet ... I cannot go to him. I cannot abandon my principles. I cannot give up everything that makes me _me_ , not even for him." Between the arms of the ice-bride and the gravity of his star, Skyfire was torn, like a paper kite torn between the winds of two storms. "He has changed, Prime, he is cold and cruel and _evil_ , but underneath all that he has become he is _still Starscream_. No matter who or what he becomes, he is still the star that guides me in the dark." As the words left his vocaliser, he felt he had made his decision. "I can't fight starlight."

"Very well," Prime managed, obviously aghast but masking it as best he could. "I suspected from the first that your loyalties might lie with your past rather than your present - but I must warn you, Skyfire. We took you in because you were confused, uninformed and vulnerable to Megatron's dogma. If you leave us now, you can never return. The choice is yours: Autobots or Decepticons."

"Oh, Prime," Skyfire cried, shaking his head. "Are there no other choices? Whichever way I turn I betray myself, and all that I hold dear! I am being torn apart!" He clasped his hands to his head, crying out, " _Why has Primus cursed me_?"

"Skyfire, are your dampers working correctly?" Prime asked, shocked at his outburst.

"They were ... damaged. I had to remove them."

Prime seemed placated by that. "Get Ratchet to install a new set. You'll feel better."

Skyfire felt the emptiness in his soul, where that hook of loss had maimed him, and knew he could never again be with Starscream without betraying himself. "Affirmative, Prime. I'll do that. Immediately."

_And Primus save my soul, for I am about to sell it for peace of mind._

 

* * *

 

When Soundwave returned to the command chamber, he found Megatron still deep in thought. Once again, the tyrant glared at the base perimeter with an expression of deep hatred etched into his face. Considering that it had taken Soundwave almost an entire megacycle to remove all the fragments of Sidewinder's armour from of his hands, he was very nearly surprised. Then again, whatever consultation had occurred between tyrant and foremech - and he was mildly irked not to have been party to it, but his long-term plans for Sidewinder were more likely to bear fruit than Megatron's seedling double-bluff - had almost certainly lasted the better part of that time.

Soundwave took his place at the command terminal and began updating the information reports, or at least pretending to. Setting his hands to follow a pre-programmed sequence of commands, Soundwave closed off his radio relays and focused his electro-auditory sensors on Megatron's brain module.

At first, he perceived nothing but a rumble of electrical activity. Then, as he continued to listen, he heard repeating loops that slowly built into patterns, coalescing into sense, and Soundwave heard Megatron's thoughts. It was not the clear-cut tone of the conscious voice, but the random babble of all cognition, a chaotic slush of prioritised concepts and stacked hierarchies. Every time a single thought rose to the attention of Megatron's central processing unit, it dragged with it a tangled net of interlinked subjects. Soundwave could make little out except for basic trends; his leader was thinking about the Autobots, and the planned raid on the Ark, and the Constructicons, about Starscream and Sidewinder and the many interrelationships between the factors. Soundwave refined his point of focus, and, systems straining on overload, slowly perceived that Megatron had reached an impasse. The tyrant could not find a solution to the problem of retrieving the deactivated Decepticons from the Ark. Having no plan of his own, Soundwave decided to keep silent, and to complete his work, and brewed beneath his facade a bitter infusion of resentment. The tyrant's mind was now a locked place to him, and now he could only listen at the keyhole where once he had wandered freely, hearing with scant attention all that was thought and felt and pondered.

The information reports made surprisingly interesting listening.

"Megatron," Soundwave called, hearing his leader turn and approach.

"What is it, Soundwave?" Megatron was not pleased at being disturbed. Very few things did please Megatron, and most of them were found on the battlefield.

Soundwave called up a plan of a human city. "Sensors detected Starscream in the vicinity of this settlement."

"What was he doing?" Megatron asked.

"Acquiring humans."

"What purpose could he have?"

"Uncertain."

Megatron glanced at the data Soundwave called up. "Bah, he's baiting the Autobots. Well, if the fool insists on looking for trouble, let him find it."

"Shockwave reports ultimate weapon test-rig status," Soundwave continued. "Still awaiting re-calibration. Energy cost of keeping test-rig assembled on site rising. Disassembly and relocation of weapon components necessary within three astrocycles, or disclosure will be unavoidable. Recall Starscream?" As he asked, Soundwave focused again on Megatron's mind.

"No, not just yet." A blink, a twitch, a flash of emotion - Soundwave perceived a sense of disappointment in Megatron, as he had anticipated he would. "Tell Shockwave to disassemble and relocate the test-rig according to schedule three, and summon Skywarp back to base. I have a task for him." Soundwave turned back to the console to send the message to Cybertron. "And send Sidewinder to finish Skywarp's patrol. If Primus has a sense of humour, the Autobots may mistake that dynametal dolt for Starscream," the tyrant muttered, a malign glint tinting his optics. Soundwave did not respond, knowing Megatron did not expect him to.

For a moment, he paused, almost imperceptibly, listening; Megatron, back turned, did not see. Soundwave turned from the terminal and summoned his blaster from a packet-fold in the fabric of space-time. Rising from his seat, he stood silently in attention as Hook and Scrapper entered the command chamber, the gun half-hidden by his side.

"Master Megatron!" Scrapper hailed. "We can begin installing components for Operation: Arena as soon as you are ready."

"So soon, Scrapper?" Megatron asked, tone laced with faint sarcasm, but waved Hook over, remaining still as the engineer opened his chest compartment and began to install a set of microcircuits. Soundwave trained his audio-sensors on Hook's fingers as they probed Megatron's internal functions. Should those digits wander from their task, towards vital systems ... he allowed his finger to rest upon the trigger of his blaster and fixed a target lock on the back of Hook's head.

"These blank power chips are only the first stage," Scrapper explained. "We must install reader chips in all the warriors, to copy the power matrices of their ephemeral systems and transfer the data into your tactical array. Then we will construct the transfer apparatus to induce the control matrices in those blank power chips. For that, we will need to install remote component controls in each warrior, who will also have to contribute a power chip rectifier. Then all we will require is a very large amount of energy, and their power systems will be yours."

"How much energy?" Megatron shifted, turning towards Scrapper just a little, and there was a dull thunk as the muzzle of his cannon came to rest against Hook's abdomen. The Constructicon froze; Soundwave heard him tremble and glance down at the untrusting barrel pressing against him.

"Approximately six thousand astrolitres are needed to induce the power matrices," Scrapper continued.

"Six thousand four hundred sixty-two for the initial induction," Hook muttered, as he finished the installation and resealed Megatron's torso module. Soundwave rested his finger against his blaster's trigger guard, but he did not put the gun away just yet.

"Each warrior who contributes to the exchange will experience a forty-three percent increase in energy consumption whilst you are using the power chips," Scrapper elaborated, "in order to maintain the remote energy link."

"That is acceptable. Prepare plans for the transfer machinery; we will construct it in the temporary base." Megatron dismissed them and then turned to Soundwave. "We require another power source for our temporary base."

Soundwave checked their information on the area surrounding the temporary base and highlighted a small city nearby. "Autobots have donated magnocyclic energy system to local humans. Recommend; reclaim wasted energy source."

"Excellent!"

Soundwave felt no glow of pride from Megatron's praise, only a faint sense of impatience. Events were moving too slowly; he wanted Sidewinder in Megatron's presence, performing deeds of worth, making himself valuable to the Decepticons.

Thundercracker came in. Soundwave immediately scanned his brain module and caught a fleeting impression of purpose - Thundercracker had seen Sidewinder leaving the base with finger-marks on his neck, finger-marks too small to have come from Megatron's hands, and had come to report it - and swiftly interjected, "Laserbeak reports." Laserbeak had been waiting to report for fifteen minutes, but there was no way Megatron would ever find out.

 _[Report, Laserbeak,]_ Megatron ordered. Thundercracker turned to leave. "No, stay where you are. I may have a task for you." Laserbeak reported, and the scrambled buzz of raw data sleeted through their processors. "Giant insects? Well done, Laserbeak. We must intercept them at once. Prepare for aerial rendezvous."

"Robot bugs? Starscream's been busy," Thundercracker muttered.

"Data suggests Cybertronian origin," Soundwave confirmed.

Switching to general radio, Megatron ordered, _[Scrapper, you will command the base until we return. Skywarp, abort your return, and sweep-patrol the sector surrounding these coordinates.]_ Megatron transmitted the location where Starscream had been seen abducting humans; then, changing to a closed frequency - Soundwave wondered why he bothered, since he himself could hear it plain as day - the tyrant ordered, _[Find Starscream.]_

"I don't get it," Thundercracker muttered. "How can Starscream be in Bali and America?" Of course, Thundercracker heard the order too. Skywarp and Thundercracker were wingmates and shared their closed frequency codes.

"He isn't, you fool," Megatron replied brusquely, as they entered the docking tower. "Either these robotic insects are not his work, or he has dispatched them to Bali to retrieve something of importance. In any case, we must locate them and assess their status - and, if necessary, terminate them."

 

* * *

 

The world was pale, and cool, and quiet. Skyfire found he could concentrate on his projects for the first time in terracycles. The new dampers hummed quietly in his internal arrays. Ratchet had been surprisingly sympathetic once Skyfire hinted that Starscream had forcibly removed the old set.

Through the gentle veil of smudged non-emotion, Skyfire perceived that his pain had not dimmed nor his internal strife grown less. He was still a helpless passenger upon the black tides, but now he no longer saw the guiding light as anything more than a pretty fixture in the sky, and rode uncaring upon his iceberg of frozen emotion, on towards whatever destiny might come.

The summons came from Prime. Something was wrong. The first tear appeared in the veil.

Skyfire entered the Ark's control room and met with Prime's full council of lieutenants, all silent and all staring at him: a portrait of muted emotions, from Jazz's faint smile of sympathy to Ratchet's concerned scowl, from Trailbreaker's cheerful wave to Wheeljack's nod of acknowledgement. Though Prowl's neutral expression was an old study in carefully-schooled emotional control, the rough composition of Ironhide's indifference told Skyfire he still was not trusted. Optimus Prime looked grave; none of his lieutenants looked any happier, but Prime managed to look both urgently concerned and deeply, personally upset by whatever had happened.

"Skyfire," the leader began grimly. "We require your ... " He paused, searching for the least distasteful phrase. "Your _expertise_ on Starscream."

The veil ripped from top to bottom. Freezing anguish poured in. _Oh, Primus, put me back under the ice,_ the scientist thought. "I'll tell you as much as I can, but ... he's changed a lot since I last knew him."

"Snakes change their skins all the time," Jazz commented. " 's just what they do." Skyfire realised he was trying to be comforting.

Prime nodded, still harsh-faced as a ragged cliff. "Starscream has abducted at least twenty-six humans in the last eight megacycles. He's made no demands, no threats, nothing. What is he doing with them, Skyfire?"

"I'm afraid I don't know, Prime."

"Think, Skyfire. What would he want humans for?" Prowl prompted. "What does he want in exchange for them?"

 _What does he want humans for?_ Skyfire wondered. _He must have some plan or use for them ... whatever he intend to do with them, he must have equipment for it._ He ran through the contents of Starscream's base in his mind: generator, communications scanner, environment controls, power adaptor, liquid refiner, cubing apparatus ... liquid refiner? "Oh, Primus ... " Skyfire groaned in realisation, sitting down abruptly. "Oh Primus ... I'm sorry! I should have realised!"

"What?" Prowl asked. "What's he doing?"

"He ... he ... he has space-capable flight engines. He needs high-energy fuel. He can run on energon but he needs a lot of it, so it's more efficient to perform a reaction-mix of energon with an energy-rich gas fuel, like hydrogen or oxygen, or better still, both. The best source of these fuels is water ... " Skyfire knew he was babbling, but the shock of realisation, the strange piercing cruelty of Starscream's actions ran a slender needle through his core.

A needle? No; a poisoned icicle, sharper than bereavement.

"Skyfire, what are you saying?" Prime asked.

"He's using them for fuel," Skyfire lamented. "Putting them through a liquid refiner to get oxygen and hydrogen for his engines." The Autobots looked as disgusted as he felt.

"That sick, twisted snake ... " Jazz trailed off, horrified. "Man, we gotta stop him!"

"We shoulda blasted him when we had the chance," Ironhide added, punching his hand. Skyfire could not bear to look up and see the accusation surely writ large upon his face.

Prime put his hand on Skyfire's shoulder; he meant to be encouraging, but to Skyfire it felt like the weight of his foolishness. "You saw his current base."

"I did."

"Can you lead us back there?"

"I'm afraid not, Prime. I was unconscious when he took me there and unconscious when I left. I have no idea where he is."

"Then we must go ourselves and locate his base of operations, to protect the humans." Again, Prime patted Skyfire's shoulder. "I will not ask you to come."

 _No,_ Skyfire thought savagely, _I've already done enough damage as it is._

_And yet ... I fear ... I still miss him._


	4. Who's Afraid of Gravity?

 

_Whosoever draws his sword against the prince must throw the scabbard away.  
_  
  
---  
  
Proverb  
  
  
The Sun sought the exile but saw him not; scattered leaves of white cloud blew ragged across the scrubland and the shade-spattered sand; the piercing eye became purblind and gazed mote-filled upon dappled desert. Skywarp sensed the first suggestions of storm-wind beneath his wings and felt the close heaviness that bespoke coming violence in the air.

Though his sensors were keyed for aerial targets, he did not fail, now and then, to look down. Now, pressing his back against the starved belly of a thin cloud, he saw something of interest and hailed Megatron.

_[Skywarp reporting.]_

_[Acknowledged. Report,]_ Megatron crackled through the ether. Static filled the air, foam on the waves of coming rain.

 _[Convoy sighted; searching the oriensal quadrant of my sweep-sector. Engage?]_ Concern tainted the Seeker's thoughts.

 _[Who?]_ Megatron queried.

_[Prime, Wheeljack, Ironhide, Sideswipe and Sunstreaker. No runts or fleshlings visible.]_

_[Negative on engage. Avoid detection - find Starscream!]_

_[Affirma - hang on - convoy is changing course - decelerating - they've stopped. Convoy is preparing for flight.]_ Skywarp sneered in contempt as the Autobots laboriously attached their rocket packs and lumbered into flight, buffeted by the high winds. _[Convoy is in flight, processing vector ... yup, they're heading straight for Bali. Pursue and attack?]_ In the air, the Autobots were nice and vulnerable ... big fat targets.

 _[Negative. Avoid detection. Continue sector-sweep,]_ Megatron ordered.

 _Big fat targets with lots of guns,_ Skywarp reminded himself sadly. _[Affirmative. Skywarp out.]_ _Oh, well. At least Thundercracker will have fun shooting them in Bali ... if they get there._ Skywarp sniggered at the thought of the Autobots plummeting into the ocean as their rocket packs ran out of fuel.

A shadow whipped across his back. Skywarp teleported, immediately translocating a mile eastward. High above, sunbeams flashed on a silver edge; his sensors detected Cybertronian alloys. Skywarp banked hard, following his wing-leader into the blustery upper atmosphere.

 _[Starscream!]_ he called. _[Wait up! I wanna talk!]_

 _[I don't trust you, Skywarp,]_ was the reply, screeched on scrambled channels.

 _[I don't trust you either,]_ he responded.

The silence stretched out into the cloud-banked eternity. Skywarp held a straight course, trying to find Starscream on his radar, but the exile's despecere baffled his sensors.

 _[Power down your weapons and teleportation cell and follow me,]_ Starscream called from silent heights. _[We'll talk.]_

Skywarp grudgingly obliged; once powered down, his teleportation cell would take half a megacycle to reach operational levels again.

Starscream lead him a zigzagging dance through the canyons, staying below the radar horizon, before plunging under an arch of rock and into a sheltered hollow. Skywarp transformed, landing with the wind on his back. Starscream was half-hidden in the shadows, beads of cloud-condensation glimmering on his armour like pearls on a silver cloth.

"What're you doing here, Skywarp?" Starscream sneered. "Did Megatron send you to kill me? I don't think you can."

"Whoa! I'm not here to fight."

"Where are the others?"

"Robo-bug-hunting in Bali. Listen, you gotta come back."

"What, and get my head shot off?"

"It's either your head or ours."

"What are you talking about, you poor excuse for a paper-dart?"

Skywarp let the insult slide. _He can have that one over me, just as long as he gets rid of Sidewinder._ "Megatron replaced you with a wing-nut called Sidewinder. He's gonna get us all killed. He's terrible."

"My condolences. I shall send flowers to your funerals."

"Starscream, it ain't funny!"

"Did I laugh?" Starscream drew himself up with haughty indignation.

Skywarp growled at his ex-commander. "Look, Sidewinder's hopeless and Megatron knows it. He's just waiting for you to point it out to Soundwave. If you come back, he'll give you your job back for certain."

"Nice try, Skywarp, but I don't think I'll be coming back today."

" _What_? Megatron replaced you with a _bomber_! You - you're not gonna stand for that, are you?" Skywarp stared in amazement. " _Are_ you?"

Starscream chuckled unpleasantly. "Surely it must have occurred to you that Megatron never does anything for the reasons apparent to everyone else. If this Sidewinder is indeed as incompetent as you say, then he is surely a lure to draw me out of hiding, the better to make a target of myself."

"Starscream, this is the truth!" Skywarp cried desperately. "Everyone's going nuts with this guy. Even the spooks are out to get him - I tell you no lie - Soundwave hates him."

"Soundwave hates me."

"Yeah, but he respects you."

"Hah!" Starscream creaked a noise perhaps intended to sound like laughter; to Skywarp, it sounded like wing-metal ripping. "Soundwave _fears_ me. Now, crawl back to Megatron and tell him if he wants me in firing range, he'll have to be smarter than that."

Skywarp went, leaving Starscream alone with the stone and the sunlight, and the exile's laughter followed him into the sky.

 

* * *

 

_He put me on patrol. He promoted me to Air Commander and then sent me out on patrol. I haven't had to do patrol since I was a captain!_

Bubbling with impotent anger, Sidewinder made a beeline for Cargo Bay #2. He couldn't take his anger out on its source, no, that would be foolish, so he sought out an easier target. Megatron had let the Constructicons into headquarters. Sidewinder considered it a foolish move, but stilled his vocaliser, mindful of Soundwave's advice. After all, why let the labour-mechs into the warrior enclave? They should be out in the desert base, where the strength transfer machine was to be constructed, where they'd be out of the way.

Still, whilst they were here, he might as well get some use out of them.

A week ago, the storage chamber next door to the repair bay had been just that; a high chamber filled with silent stacks of spare parts and pieces. Now, amongst the crates and the drums and the towering stacks, in the centre of the room, there was a cleared space. A makeshift workbench had been set up with floor panelling and empty crates; spilt across its surface were tools, part-made parts and what looked like half a packet of welding rods. The previously clean and sterile air now smelt of oil and burnt insulation.

The Constructicons had arrived.

Sidewinder could hear them moving around the bay. One was at the boreal end of the bay, where the base met the rock; there were sounds of digging. Another was in the further aisles of the storage racks, presumably the unfortunate designated to keep track of the supplies inventory. Two more - he could hear conversation - were cutting a door from Cargo Bay #2 into the repair bay. And as for number five ...

Sidewinder strolled out of the storage aisles to smile down at the small, weak, unarmed mechanism at the workbench. "Hmm, Hook, isn't it?"

The Constructicon managed to look down at him, despite being both seated on an empty barrel and a good head shorter than him. "Yes, I am Hook." The tone of his voice balanced between disdain and ire.

"And you are the one who pretends to be a repair specialist?"

"I am a _surgeon_."

"Meaning you cut people up with marginally more competence that the rest of your labour-crew."

Lime-green fingers clenched around the handle of whatever tool the Constructicon was working on. Sidewinder smirked; the truth obviously hurt. "What do you want?" Hook seethed.

"I want my engines upgraded, _if_ you are capable of such a task."

"Upgraded from what to what?"

"Class beta-dec to class alpha-quad."

Hook gave him a five-decacycle look of cold appraisal. "Request refused."

"Why?"

"Parts shortage."

Sidewinder gestured around at the cargo bay. "Storage is overflowing."

"Wrong parts."

"Remanufacture them."

"Then we would be short of other, more important parts."

"Manufacture new ones."

"We're short of materials, too."

"Are none of you capable of finding new materials?"

Hook did not reply; instead, he closed the casing on the tool he was working on and activated it. It spat a sputter of blue light that settled into a low, humming white arc. The Constructicon regarded the cutting light with a certain professional satisfaction.

"Scavenger is our materials specialist, and Long Haul deals with procurement. I, however, am an engineer and a surgeon. My job is to cut people up, as you so brusquely put it. This tool, for example, I use to cut damaged armour from damaged warriors." He looked at Sidewinder with the gaze of someone mentally reckoning the spare parts he represented. "If you do not desist in pestering me, I will demonstrate the process, starting with your mouth."

 

* * *

 

Skywarp came out of the command chamber shaken and concerned. Megatron had been unnervingly interested in Starscream's behaviour and had gone to great lengths in debriefing him - even going so far as to order Skywarp to download copies of all records of the incident from his memory banks. That was bad enough alone, but having Soundwave there, listening, almost certainly reading his mind, put the jitters into Skywarp.

Above all, he was worried about Thundercracker. Megatron was damaged, Soundwave was damaged, and there was no sign of his wingmate. Skywarp teleported directly into the repair bay -

"Oy! Use the door next time!"

\- and raised his hands just in time to swat aside the jagged chunk of armour Mixmaster hurled at him.

"You've been told not to do that in here! You know we have packet-folding equipment down here - do you _want_ to see what'll happen if your entire folded mass decompresses inside your chassis?" the Constructicon continued vehemently, wagging his armour-cutter at Skywarp from behind Thundercracker. Skywarp's wingmate sat on his repair plinth and grinned as the chemist continued to berate Skywarp for his action. Occasionally, the wounded Seeker's mouth would spasm into a grimace as Mixmaster tugged on one of his wings, now a mere tatter of singed shrapnel. Energon spattered the Constructicon's fingers and pattered on the floor in slippery splatters. Thundercracker was scorched, charred and puncture-wounds pot-holed his armour, but - Skywarp breathed a sigh of mimetic relief - fully functional.

"What happened in Bali?" he asked, when Mixmaster finished berating him.

"We got our afterburners handed to us on a plate by three stunted amnesiac deserters," Thundercracker snarled. "We chased them the whole way from Bali to the oriensal coast of America, and then they turned on us and kicked us halfway back again."

"Par for the leaking course," Skywarp laughed. "Anyone we know? Or more friends of Starscream's?"

"No. I thought at first it was gonna be one of the wings with us on the _Nemesis_ , but it wasn't. I don't know who those guys were. Never seen them before in my life, but their energy key signatures were about five hekavorns old. They must've been new activations when we boarded the _Nemesis_."

"Coulda been from the spook squad."

"Nah. Soundwave didn't recognise them. Least, I don't think he did." He shrugged indifferently.

"Autobot saboteurs?"

"When we arrived, they were gearing up to turn that face-changin' Skyfire into a scrap heap."

"Not bad."

"Only when you're not on the receiving end," Thundercracker winced, flexing his right arm; his elbow joint squeaked painfully. "That Shrapnel packs a wallop, even for a runt." He imitated a strange, dry, buzzing voice, " ' _Now, taste the lighting-lightning!_ ' Next time we meet, he's gonna eat thunder."

"Think they're anything to do with Starscream?"

"That's what the boss thought, until we actually met them. The only things they were interested in were blowing up Autobots and eating everything in sight. Screamer would've set them on us from the start, then showed up to gloat after they baited us under that thundercloud ... probably would've shot a few pieces off of Megatron, too."

"They got him as well?" Skywarp had seen Megatron's damages, but hadn't realised they weren't Autobot-inflicted.

"Yeah, him, me, Soundwave ... we all got a taste of Shrapnel-zap." He winced again. "I hate to agree with an Autobot, but it tastes _terrible_." Mockingly, he imitated Reflector's voice. " ' _Had a bad day at work, honey?_ ' Ooh, I'm gonna _pound_ him - hey, what're you doing?"

"Installing reader chips in your power circuits," Mixmaster snapped. "Megatron's orders - so _hold still_."

"It's the new plan," Skywarp told him disinterestedly; Thundercracker allowed the Constructicon to continue.

"Already?"

"Yeah, the boss told me just earlier," Skywarp shrugged. Thundercracker raised a superoptic ridge. "Scrapper's gonna build a machine that'll give Megatron all our powers, and then he's gonna challenge old Op to a one-on-one." He grinned confidently. "That windbag's as good as scrapped."

"Maybe," Thundercracker replied gloomily, testing his elbow again. It still squeaked. Skywarp leaned against the wall, nonchalantly waiting for his wingmate to finish grumbling.

There was a crash from the side of the room, as Scavenger finished cutting his way through the wall. Bonecrusher strode in through the soon-to-be door, carrying a load of spare parts in from the cargo bay, and Mixmaster began attaching them to Thundercracker. "Having these guys around ain't so bad," the battered Seeker commented. "Now we don't have to find our own spares anymore."

"Stick it up yer afterburner and explode, jet-breath," Bonecrusher replied, picking up Thundercracker's broken pieces and taking them away.

"And so polite with it too," Skywarp chuckled.

"Finished. Get lost," Mixmaster said shortly, giving Thundercracker a parting slap on the back that left bright fingerprints in fresh energon, and departed without a further word.

"I saw Starscream earlier," Skywarp continued quietly. "Asked him to come back."

"And?"

"He laughed at me. He thinks Megatron's going to kill him."

"You mean he isn't?" Thundercracker replied sarcastically, testing his elbow for the third time; it no longer squeaked.

Skywarp looked at his wingmate with very calm and focused optics. "You know what this means, don't you?"

"Yeah. I've been waiting for it for a long time," Thundercracker grimaced. "Reflector can wait until later."

 

* * *

 

It wasn't the threat, Sidewinder told himself. It wasn't the threat; it was the insufferable rudeness of the labour-mech. That was why he was leaving. He would report it to ... to ... to _someone_ \- he could work out whom later - but he had to get out of this dark, claustrophobic cavern of towering storage racks.

The luckless inventory-minding Constructicon without a face was shadowing him, walking parallel down the aisle, quick and silent; yet, when the aisle opened out, the cautious stalker kept to his natural seclusion.

In front of him, the gang leader, the masked and visored first face of the work-crew.

"You have upset my engineer," Scrapper accused.

"Your _engineer_ , is he? And here I was thinking he was a _surgeon_."

"He is both. He is also very annoyed. You insulted his competence; now he will be unbearable for astrocycles."

"So?" _Who does this jumped-up little digger think he is?_

"If you value your structural integrity, _don't come here again_!"

"You're the repair crew!"

"You're asking to be made into a wall ornament!"

"You've got a sparking nerve, talking to a Seeker like that!" Sidewinder shrieked. "You're a labour-mech, a technician, so just _shut up and fix things_!"

" _Fix things_?" the foremech growled. "I am an _engineer_. I am an _architect_. I do more than just _fix things_."

"You, an architect? You're a trench-digger! A hauler! You have no idea what architecture even is!"

"Oh yes, and you do?"

"Yes! When I say architecture, I mean things like - like the Dominion Gate!" Sidewinder grasped the first and most impressive thing he could summon from his limited knowledge.

"You call _that_ architecture?" Scrapper yelped, shocked. "That - that carbuncle on the face of Darkmount?"

"Yes! It's ... it's the Decepticon future, isn't it? All the sculptures," Sidewinder fumbled. "Shockwave and Starscream ... and Megatron, with his crown and everything ... and ... and the steps, with the Autobots all screaming in pain."

"Megatron hates it." Scrapper sounded uncomfortable. "Starscream hates it. Shockwave hates it. _Everyone_ hates it."

"Everyone?" Sidewinder asked sweetly, leaning over the foremech. "Or are you just jealous?"

"The only person who ever praised the Dominion Gate is Soundwave," Scrapper replied, sounding faintly disgusted, "and he _designed_ the repulsive thing!" Deciding the Constructicon was suitably humbled in his obvious jealousy, Sidewinder swept past him and out into the corridor.

Almond-slanted optics glittered between medieval nasal and buccal ridges as sharp and feral as the mask of a turbofox. Sidewinder skidded to a halt to avoid walking directly into a drum-backed Constructicon with energon on his fingers.

"A word of warning," the chemist spat, in a tone that sent prickles of nervousness down Sidewinder's relays. " _We_ built the Dominion Gate - and no _sculptor_ touched the stairs!"

The Constructicon darted around him, back into the sheltering dimness of Cargo Bay #2, leaving Sidewinder standing in the corridor, bemused and startled.

 _Well, if those Autobot faces aren't sculpted, what are they?_ he wondered. At that moment, Thundercracker and Skywarp came out of the repair bay. He ignored them.

When his head hit the corridor wall, Sidewinder realised that had been foolish.

 

* * *

  

" - _in foreign news, the President has formally asked Autobot leader Optimus Prime to explain the reported presence of Autobot forces in Bali, where the country's largest oil refinery was destroyed by what are described as "giant robotic insects." Seen in the company of a white jet of alien origin, the destruction has lead to a major ecological crisis as crude oil continues to spill from the wreckage of the tanker, 'Gloria Mundi.' Eyewitness accounts from the scene describe two or three groups of giant humanoid robots; Decepticon forces have been positively identified from the accounts._

_Asked to explain yet another apparent breach of the 1984 Autobot Reservation Treaty, Mr. Prime refused to comment directly. A press statement released from the Ark states that at no point were Autobots present in Bali and that the conflict was purely a matter of Decepticon internal politics. The Autobots further stated that the Treaty - which prohibits them from leaving the Mount St Hilary Reservation without clearance from the armed forces - is an intolerable restriction of their freedom and that they would prefer to defend humanity against Decepticon aggression instead of standing by passively. The United States Ambassador to the Autobots, Mr Witwicky, had this to say:_

'The Autobots are just trying to help us. We really shouldn't be afraid of them; the treaty is just stopping them from kicking Megatron's tail off the planet and letting us all get on with our lives in peace.'

_The government of Bali has accepted the offer of Autobot assistance in the clean-up operation, and Autobots are already working alongside human teams to undo the damage caused by the oil spill. Critics have slated this move, stating that the Autobots will 'cause more harm than they undo.' No Decepticon representative was available for comment._

_In sports today -_ "

Starscream switched the communications scanner off and leaned back into the veils of light, clapped his hands together in glee, and laughed so hard the walls of Stormhangar rang in cacophony.

 

* * *

 

Sidewinder didn't even see them coming; he just stood there, fuming silently, until Thundercracker rammed an elbow under his costal and slammed him into the wall. Sidewinder bounced and rattled satisfyingly, optics flashing in shock. He regained his balance and looked from Thundercracker to Skywarp, stunned and amazed. Thundercracker felt his own face draw close in an angry scowl.

"I've had enough of you," he growled.

"We've both had enough of you," Skywarp continued.

"You almost got us _killed_ on that raid."

"If you attack me," Sidewinder stated calmly, "it will be assault on a superior officer."

"Yeah, right," sneered Thundercracker. "Go crying to Soundwave, why don't you."

Skywarp leaned in, prodding Sidewinder in the cockpit. "This isn't Cybertron, grease-stain, it's Earth ... and down here, your rank means nothing."

Sidewinder must have realised the fight was inevitable; he balled his fists and braced himself. "All right then, you fossils, come on - if you dare!"

For a moment, Thundercracker was nothing but anger and movement, lunging for the throat and optics of the hated usurper. Sidewinder got in one punch - striking Skywarp on his left intake - before they went down in a punching, grabbing mass of angry jets. Thundercracker got on top of the green Seeker and started pounding his face, slamming his so-called-sibling's head back against the decking until both began to dent.

"Look out!" Skywarp hissed and vanished in a flash. Thundercracker was so caught up in making Sidewinder one with the floor he was deeply startled when a large, dark hand clamped down on his shoulder and tossed him aside.

"What in the name of Cybertron is going on here?" Megatron roared.

"They assaulted me!" Sidewinder piped through cracked lips, scrambling to his feet.

"I can see that, you micro-brained moron!" With a powerful swing of his left fist, Megatron sent Sidewinder crashing across the corridor.

Thundercracker felt a vicious blaze of joy. Seeing that made any punishment worth it. He stifled his laugh and froze his smile, trying to be as silent and inconspicuous as possible.

"Get up, both of you," Megatron hissed. "You!" He pointed at Sidewinder, who was picking himself off the floor with deliberately pained movements, examining his dented, buckled armour with exaggerated winces. Megatron was obviously having none of it and sent the commander on his way with a shove. "Control chamber, now! You!" He pointed at Thundercracker, who congratulated himself on having edged out of Megatron's reach just in time to avoid spending half the night beating the dents out of his neck-plate. "Are confined to quarters until I decide how to punish you," He glanced at Sidewinder's quickly retreating back, and then continued in a low sneer, "if at all."

 

* * *

 

The control chamber seemed a dark place, a black-walled cavern filled with smoke and heat from the fire that roared inside him. Sidewinder was a silhouette in the darkness, a smudge, a suggestion of form: a cringing, frightened shape with target-bright optics. Megatron's fury, already stoked to a high heat, flared under this fresh intake of tinder and erupted.

" _You miserable excuse for a waste of metal_!" Sidewinder flinched so hard he nearly fell flat on his back. Megatron couldn't help but compare him to Starscream; his Air Commander never cowered this badly, had always had the courage to stand up to his anger, if not his cannon. "What kind of idiocy was that? What were you doing, sparring?"

"They assaulted me!" Sidewinder whimpered.

"Did they _really_?" Megatron snarled. "That's nothing compared to what _I'll_ do to you, if anything like this happens again."

"But -"

"But _nothing_! You're a commander - command! Or do I have to send you back to Cybertron -"

"Well - "

"- in _small, charred pieces_?"

"I - "

" _Silence_!" Megatron grabbed the Seeker by the neck. As he expected, Sidewinder's optics glazed as he gazed down the barrel of the fusion cannon pointed at his face; he didn't so much as glance at the tyrant's face. "I didn't summon you from Cybertron to be kicked about by Starscream's wingmen! If you _ever_ make a fool of yourself like this again, oh, you will suffer beyond _imagination_!"

Sidewinder didn't even squeak in reply.

Furious beyond words, Megatron hurled the Seeker aside, feeling some measure of satisfaction at his painful crash and whimper.

"Report to Soundwave," Megatron ordered. "Maybe he can fix whatever's wrong with your obviously deficient brain module." Sidewinder left in a hurried limping scuttle.

Alone, Megatron turned his face skywards and roared, " _Will no one rid me of this turbulent tape-deck_? Oh, I should have kicked him out and kept Starscream!"

Mastering his fury, leashing it like a mad dog, he scowled out once more at the blooming ocean flora, now rendered in his reddened sight as a hanger of gallows-trees rising from a sea-bed of shattered bones beneath a storm-dark sky. _You chose this one, Soundwave, and I accepted your choice. Now give me a reason to keep him._

 

* * *

 

Sidewinder limped to Soundwave's quarters. A tinny humming had started in his audios, and his vision was imprecise, both the result of Thundercracker trying to stave in his face. His right knee was damaged and his balance was awry from the impromptu flight across the corridor. On top of that, being tossed across the control chamber had bent his left wing, which was swiftly driving Sidewinder to new heights of pain.

He punched Soundwave's access-chime and felt a measure of spiteful satisfaction when it broke under his fist.

The door to Soundwave's quarters opened. Sidewinder stepped in -

"Ow!"

"Hey, watch it!"

\- and collided with something knee-high and angry. Sidewinder looked down at a blue-purple runt-thing.

"Where's Soundwave?"

"What do I look like, a freakin' answerin' machine?"

Sidewinder's temper, frayed, began to rip. He grabbed the little runt and gave him a good strong squeeze. The drone-thing screamed.

Darkness fell with a sudden burst of sparks.

Sidewinder reeled, feeling shards of his lower mandible protruding through his faceplate. The twilight mass of Soundwave stood over him, a streak of violet hiding behind his leg and grinning with optics full of vengeful joy.

"Megatron sent me," was the first thing Sidewinder thought to say.

Soundwave cocked his head slightly.  "Sent you to attack Rumble?"

"No, I -" Sidewinder clammed up. "He sent me here to get fixed."

Soundwave's near-total lack of expression did not alter. "Report to the Constructicons."

 

* * *

 

 _That ... that jumped-up cassette player! That miserable excuse for an officer! That over-promoted technician!_ Sidewinder seethed. _Soundwave is going to_ pay _for this!_

By the time he reached Cargo Bay #2, the cracks in his faceplate had stopped leaking, and the tinny humming in his audios had almost completely faded away. His equilibrium had restabilised, and internal repairs were already improving the state of his knee. He could, he considered, just go back to his quarters - which were most definitely not on a par with Starscream's private tower - and beat the dents out of his armour himself.

 _Not likely,_ Sidewinder fumed. _If I'm a blasted commander then I'm going to be treated like one, and that means someone else beats my armour out!_

Stamping down the storage aisles to the heart of Constructicon domain, Sidewinder felt more than ever like an outsider forcing his way into hostile territory; not that it bothered him. After all, he was a Seeker, and Seekers were designed for such things.

As before, he found a Constructicon at the makeshift worktable. This one, with a tail and an armful of ore samples, he hadn't met before.

"Hmm, Scavenge, isn't it?"

"Scavenger," the labour-mech replied, putting his ore samples to one side and standing. He hesitated, halfway between retreat into the high stacks and some other compulsion, some sense, perhaps, of his duty and his inferiority before a Seeker - yes, before a Seeker, and a _commander_ at that! Sidewinder grinned; this was an attitude he liked. "Is there something you need from supplies?"

"Not quite," Sidewinder smiled, cheered by the Constructicon's unnerved fidgeting. "I need the dents put out of my armour. Can you do _that_?"

"I - I can, but - " Scavenger trailed off nervously, glancing aside into the towering lists as if seeking kindred optics in the shade.

"Oh, I see," Sidewinder purred. "Your comrades have decided I'm off the favours list." He smiled, almost purring with spite as he worked the Constructicon's weak spot. "Now, we can't have this, can we? After all, what use is a repairer who won't repair?" Scavenger hung his head; Sidewinder eased up to him and patted his shoulder encouragingly. "Why don't we just put that little snit earlier down to new-body blues and get on with things, hmm? After all, we both know that if you won't fix me, I'm going to have to report you for insubordination and I don't think Megatron would be pleased with you then, would he? Would he? Hmm?"

"I ... I'll fix your armour," Scavenger managed in a small, troubled voice, and Sidewinder patted his shoulder again.

"I knew you'd see it my way," he replied triumphantly.

There was something eminently pleasing in watching Scavenger repair his dented parts. Unlike his comrades, the Constructicon was unobstructive, even helpful, and Sidewinder toyed with the possibility of taking him on as his own technical aide, when he had established his position enough to have a private staff.

 _Yes,_ he thought. _I believe I can find a very good use for this one._

Repairs finished, Sidewinder examined the shiny surfaces of his armour with an air of disdain. "I suppose they'll do," he sighed, watching with a wicked thrill as Scavenger's posture went from hopeful to downhearted. "However, there is one more thing I need." Scavenger looked a little apprehensive. Sidewinder patted him companionably on the shoulder again. "It's all right," he purred. "I'm not going to bite you. I was just wondering if you could help me find something." The Constructicon's visor lit up enthusiastically.

 _Direct hit and right on target!_ Sidewinder congratulated himself.

"I'd love to help," Scavenger replied eagerly. "What do you need?"

"Oh, I don't need anything, really," Sidewinder smarmed. "It's just this; I'm an artillery jet - a fighter-bomber, if you will - but I'm a little short of a certain type of explosive I need to make some of my more powerful missiles. I don't suppose you have any good, strong explosives anywhere?"

"Bonecrusher keeps several types of explosive substances in the demolitions locker," Scavenger replied. "And if there's nothing there that suits your needs, I'm sure Mixmaster can make you something -"

"I'm sure that won't be necessary," Sidewinder shushed. "Just show me what Bonecrusher has in his locker."

 

* * *

 

The night passed in brooding, venomous blackness; Sidewinder worked through its foul hours in secret silence. Breaking into Starscream's soaring laboratory-tower provided him with not only a refuge from prying optics and suspicious audios - for what is hell in the absence of devils but a barren waste of brimstone and low-smouldering ash? - but also all the tools and parts he could ever require for his bitter work. Amidst equipment whose function he could barely begin to guess at and half-created instruments of destruction, Sidewinder - a feeble changeling in a litter of treachery and guile - scraped together a pale imitation of Starscream's vast malice and cunning, and set it to work.

In the cast-off shell of his predecessor's knowledge, he sat and waited, and soon the weight of history pressed down hard in the darkness. The low, sharp light from his terminal threw a giant shadow on the billowing curves of wall and instrument, and, as he sat and paced and listened and sat again, it seemed that it was he who was the shadow to the giant, he the pitiable imitation of the greater one. The mocking shadow loomed, and gloated, and the very silence was thick with the ill will of the exile.

 _It's just my imagination._ Sidewinder chuckled to banish the cobwebby fears, and his caution-smothered chortle failed to resound within walls that had shaken to Starscream's shrieking, pealing laughter. With piercing clarity, Sidewinder felt the absence of Starscream around him, an inverted presence which seeped out of every corner, every nook and cranny, whose optics were the reflections of light on dark metal, and felt a thin sliver of fear work its way deep into his core. It was behind him, the loathsome hollow shell, and at his side, and laying cold hands upon his shoulder, clammy and poisonous, and Sidewinder steeled himself against shuddering terror.

 _There's nothing here, nothing here, nothing here,_ he repeated in his mind; but he did not dare speak aloud, as if to do so were to alert the malevolence spirit of Starscream's absence, the black foul mood left by his departure, to his existence, and invite its wicked teeth to his throat.

Time lost its tracks, and the gears of Chronos spun freely in the night; Sidewinder huddled, frozen, in the centre of the laboratory, hunched over a single white light and shivered against the cold breath of the void, as Starscream's emptiness whispered hints of fell intent and heaped worry upon his shoulders.

The explosion roared like Megatron's wrath unleashed, banishing the fey absence and scattering darkness with a thrown handful of cinders; the emergency lights glared sternly on Sidewinder. The Seeker grinned, freed of his imagined horror, as klaxons wailed a funeral dirge.

_So long, Soundwave!_

Given heart by the sundering of the symbiont, Sidewinder strode from Starscream's laboratory, and out into the panic-blackened corridors of Decepticon headquarters.

 

* * *

 

The intersection was full of smoke and shouting. Black, acrid billows of hell-vapour rippled across the ceiling; icy water churned around his afterburners, streaked with fuel. Sidewinder stood and smiled as he saw Soundwave's quarters. A flaming inferno raged therein, hot as vengeance, throwing raw light out to silhouette Hook and Skywarp where they stood in the middle of the junction, yelling angrily at one another over the mourning howl of klaxons. Scavenger knelt in the water, assembling an emergency pump. In the roaring, melting darkness where Soundwave's quarters had been, Sidewinder saw figures moving hither and thither.

Huddled in an alcove, Soundwave's black runt-thing stood fearful-faced and silent, and with him were the running cat and the twin birds: only one of the symbiont creatures was missing.

 _The fifth must have died with its host,_ Sidewinder reasoned. _How sweet._

Scrapper dashed out of the inferno, streaked with smoke and spattered with slag, flames ringing his shins as fuel-laced water met hot metal. He yelled a hoarse screed of incomprehensible labour-mech gibberish to Hook, and pelted down a corridor at a break-neck run. Hook in turn yelled similar jargon into the inferno, whence another's growl returned from amongst the roaring flames. Megatron's distinctive bellow interrupted the cacophony entire as he emerged from a smoke-choked corridor.

"Conduit's going to breach!" Hook yelled. "Need to shut down shunt twelve and plate the hull ruptures!" Megatron looked even more annoyed and roared something unintelligible to Skywarp, who teleported away. Megatron then shouted to Scavenger about the klaxons and plunged into the burning room, vanishing in the fire.

Thundercracker and Reflector jogged past Sidewinder, the former sparing him a withering glance, and Hook immediately barred their path, gesturing in the direction Scrapper had taken. The four turned and headed back the way they'd come at a run. Sidewinder stepped out of their path too late, and Thundercracker elbowed him aside roughly. Scavenger killed the klaxons, which died with a woeful wail.

 _Much,_ Sidewinder imagined, _as Soundwave just did._

Hook caught Sidewinder by the arm and started shouting some _order_. He clenched a fist to swat the Constructicon aside but stopped to silence his vocaliser, crushing a curse, as Long Haul and Mixmaster emerged from the inferno supporting Soundwave between them.

The symbiont was broken; his chest-door was shattered, and only white-hot splinters of crystal remained, like burning teeth to gnaw upon his entrails. The melted, warped mess of his armour ran down in waxy rivulets to drop and sizzle in the water. His right arm, lost below the elbow in a dripping stub, hung bent and useless.

Yet still the monster lived.

Sidewinder felt a surge of hatred so strong he nearly screamed, and at that moment Soundwave raised his head; his visor was shattered, but there was life enough in his fused face to express a ferocious, undying fury. Soundwave attempted to shake free of the Constructicons, but his legs would bear no weight, and he merely staggered in their arms. Shards of crystal spilled from his gaping chest, and at the sound of their fall, as if awakened to the cavity there, Soundwave rose up with a synthetic scream.

It was loss, and emptiness, and all the darkest hours of the night when bereavement sinks its merciless claws into the soul. At that sound of helpless, hopeless grief torn from a soul so cold, Sidewinder withered inside.

"He's alive!" Megatron bellowed, then, more quietly repeated, "He's alive." He stood in the mouth of the inferno, and in his arms was the purple runt-thing, now little more than an oozing mass of melted metal. "He's tough. He'll survive." Soundwave wavered in silence and slumped unconscious against Long Haul.

"Great," the faceless Constructicon grumbled. "Why is it always me who has to carry the heavy ones?"

"You were created to carry a burden," Hook replied, gingerly taking Rumble from Megatron's arms.

"Enough chatter!" Megatron snapped. "Scavenger - activate the emergency pumps. Mixmaster - extinguish the fires. Hook, Long Haul - repair bay with those two." The leader ducked back under the sagging doorframe and disappeared into the thickening smoke.

"One of these days, I'm gonna die, and then I'm gonna give Primus a real piece of my mind about making me into a blasted freight hauler," Long Haul continued, shifting his grip on Soundwave and collapsing into vehicle mode with the unconscious symbiont in his berth.

"Should I ever find myself in the same situation, I intend to give Primus a piece of _my_ mind about having to put up with so many pieces of _your_ mind," Hook retorted. Sidewinder watched as they left, sending fuel-bright eddies through the knee-deep water.

"Even though _his_ mind is also _your_ mind," Mixmaster muttered, almost absent-mindedly, before following Megatron back into the furnace, leaving Sidewinder bewildered in the smoke and water.

_What in Cybertron's name did he mean by that?_

 

* * *

 

Fire within, fire without; the fire in the base still burned, low and exhausted, but Scrapper attended to a greater conflagration; the incandescent inferno of Megatron's volcanic rage, now rising as a firestorm, needing but one stick of tinder to unleash it upon some unfortunate. Starscream was not there - no quick voice to whisper soothingly and drip honeyed words upon the tyrant's sore temper; no hate-toughened body to weather the storm of fists and fury; no tower of pride and knives upon which the primal storm could loose itself - and Scrapper missed him keenly. As if to highlight that silver-tongued absence, Sidewinder stood and watched him with a sly smile.

 _Ugliness,_ Scrapper thought, wishing the impending beating upon the newcomer. _This is wrongness. This is how it feels to see pillars placed out of order, so that a shaft of light falls in the wrong place, illuminating a poor copy and leaving a darkness where a bright figure should be. This is what Bonecrusher calls ugliness._

"It was a bomb," Scrapper reported reluctantly. "Thirty astrogrammes of promethium delivered through the ventilation ducts on a hover-pod and triggered by Soundwave's energy signature."

"He heard it coming," Frenzy yelled, and Scrapper winced. The Infocon stood ill at ease near Megatron, small face etched with worry and aimless anger. Frenzy had already been ejected twice from the repair bay. Scrapper knew that, in quiet moments, the pale face would come back to haunt him, and the shaken voice would ask again, _Is Rumble going to die, Scrapper?_ "He heard something in the vents and opened 'em up to take a listen, and then everything blew up!" Megatron stilled Frenzy with a gesture, and then beckoned Scrapper to continue.

 _This is an ungainly composition,_ the architect thought, looking from Megatron to Sidewinder and back again. _The great structure of the emperor unbuttressed by his half-as-mighty stanchions, leaving in unequal contrast the centrepiece and the poor figure, and between them, a shadow, a dark space where something bigger and bolder has been removed - replaced by this crass copy!_

"Soundwave will need a sixty-percent exostructure replacement and a new right arm," Scrapper reported. "He will be fit for active duty in two megacycles."

"And Rumble?" Megatron snapped. Melted metal draped across his body; cinders glowed in his slag-ridden armour.

"The brunt of the blast was directed into Soundwave's forward torso module. It looks like Rumble was inside when the bomb went off. He's in very poor condition. We have him stabilised for now, but he's going to need rebuilding from the endostructure upwards. Be about four terracycles before he's walking again, and he won't be ready for active service for at least a quintun."

"The bomb."

"Anyone could have built it."

"Hover-pods are not standard issue equipment."

"Ravage traced the ion-trail from the hover-pod," Sidewinder interjected. "It appears that someone broke into Starscream's laboratory and constructed the bomb there. He had all the necessary equipment and parts there." He gestured to the remains of bomb-craft that lay displayed on a nearby workstation. "A microparticle scan revealed Constructicon picotrons on the pieces. Unfortunately their new bodies haven't been in use long enough for their picotrons to differentiate sufficiently to identify individuals yet, but -"

"Only Constructicon microparticles?" Megatron growled.

"Well, my picotrons are also present, but as I had already handled the pieces bringing them here ..." Sidewinder trailed off with an overly-slick shrug. "The scan also detected Starscream's microparticle traces; hardly surprising, as the parts are all from his laboratory."

"Except the promethium," Megatron stated darkly. "That's a demolitions explosive, not suitable for munitions. Well, Scrapper?"

"As far as I am aware, only we Constructicons have access to promethium," Scrapper admitted painfully. "Mixmaster can make it, and Bonecrusher keeps some ready for demolitions use ..."

"All securely kept, I'm sure," Sidewinder commented snidely.

Megatron's fingers twitched. Scrapper felt a strong urge to cringe. He could almost see their leader's fury building to critical mass. His optics glowed with a fuel-pump come-and-go, a bright tide of ebbing-flowing anger so close to terrible eruption. "Bonecrusher keeps all the more powerful explosives in his locker in Cargo Bay #2."

"Has the locker been checked?" Sidewinder asked sharply.

"No."

"Perhaps it should be."

Scrapper called Bonecrusher. The demolitionist checked his locker.

 _[Someone's been through it,]_ Bonecrusher reported. _[There's thirty a-g's of the strong stuff gone!]_

"And who has access to that locker?" Sidewinder asked sweetly.

"All Constructicons have access system keys, including myself. Soundwave has the general override system key." Scrapper didn't mention that both Starscream and Megatron had universal override system keys.

"And who has accessed the locker?" Sidewinder sneered.

"I ... don't know," Scrapper stalled, desperately wishing the other Constructicons were there. It was so much easier to defuse these power games when there were two or three working on it. A panic was blinding him; he could see nothing but ill-crafted shadows and furious brightness. Amongst the chiaroscuro, death beckoned.

"Let's see ..." Sidewinder purred, fingertips gracing the keyboard in a victory dance. "According to the system key log, the only person to access Bonecrusher's locker since the inventory was tabulated was ... Scavenger."

The spark hit the tinder. Megatron's optics flamed like the hearts of volcanoes in anger.

" _Where is Scavenger_?"

 

* * *

 

 _Victory!_ Sidewinder crowed as he left the command chamber. _Victory! That foolish labour-mech will take the fall, just as I planned!_ He could almost have danced for joy.

As he left to search for more 'evidence' in Starscream's laboratory, he passed Thundercracker and Skywarp escorting Scavenger. The Constructicon, bereft of his team-mates and forcibly extracted from his native cargo bay, stared at him with wide-opticed fear and bewilderment. The two Seekers glared with cold hatred.

" _Bomber_ ," Thundercracker hissed as they passed.

Half-dancing, Sidewinder descended into the underground tunnels between the towers and tracked his way to Starscream's tower, where, in the empty laboratory, he found himself alone in a bleak, still silence.

Intimate intimations of last night's horror crept over him. In the shadowed quiet, Sidewinder felt again the absence of Starscream as a palpable sensation, a loose wild violence flying free in the dimness, seeking the missing one's return.

Sidewinder shuddered, and looked for the rest of the deliberately-arranged debris he had left to incriminate Scavenger.

The remnants were gone.

 _Impossible!_ was his first thought. _No - someone has already seen them, and taken them to Megatron._

Behind him, something moved. Sidewinder turned with a start. Almost expecting Starscream, he was freely relieved when he saw three Constructicons: Mixmaster, crowned in ashes and wreathed in mourning-black cinders; Long Haul, idly tapping a crowbar against the palm of his hand; Bonecrusher, clenching fists still clagged with slag.

"Sidewinder," the chemist grinned sharply. "We've been looking for you everywhere."

"Thought you might've left in a hurry," Bonecrusher added.

"Might've been an idea if you had," Long Haul concluded.

Sidewinder backed away. "Is this about Scavenger?"

"Yup," the transport replied.

"Look, I don't know what he's told you -"

"Are you calling Scavenger a liar?" Mixmaster snapped.

"Maybe," Sidewinder wavered.

"Oh, only _maybe_?" Mixmaster came closer; in the half-light, his angular face was a mask of vicious spite. "We are the Constructicons - we have no secrets!"

Sidewinder opened his mouth to protest, but all the sound he made was a shriek as Mixmaster tackled him to the ground. With a twin-throated engine-roar, Bonecrusher and Long Haul attacked.

In the darkness between the violent green bodies, Sidewinder thought he saw Starscream's shadow laughing at him.

 

* * *

 

_The insufferable insolence of that wretch!_

Megatron slung another punch, reducing an unfortunate workstation into a crumpled tangle.

That smug, self-satisfied, sickening Sidewinder! To hear him reeling Scrapper in like that, and all the while knowing, down in his core, that the wretched Seeker was to blame for the whole mess, even though there was nothing but proof that Scavenger had planted the bomb. Sidewinder found the remains of the bomb-craft in Starscream's laboratory. Ravage smelt Scavenger all over the pieces. Scavenger could offer no explanation for anything, only some quivering recollection that Sidewinder had taken an interest in the explosives locker the night before; just the kind of feeble defence he would expect from the frightened geologist.

Scavenger had no defence, no scapegoat, no one to blame. He could not even offer some excuse - Megatron would have accepted without hesitation the act as some deed of desperation from a mechanism blackmailed to breaking point - no, the idiot couldn't dig himself out of the hole into which he had been lured.

The choice lay before him, reeking and foul. To reward Sidewinder for his neatly crafted plot and condemn to death a Constructicon - a loyal warrior-technician of good standing and long service - and to wreak further destruction amongst his gestalt-mates. Else, he could be seen to stand aside, to refuse judgement, to allow the bombing to pass off uncommented and thereby weaken his own leadership. On the one side lay the opportunity to reward clumsy, short-sighted spite that profited the cause nothing, and on the other, the chance to shoot himself in the foot.

 _Oh, I could happily smelt them all, the fools_. He could all but hear Starscream laughing at him.

"Master Megatron?" chorused Reflector.

"What?" the tyrant snapped, twisting around uncomfortably and shedding several slabs of brittle slag.

"Undertaking probationary observation of Sidewinder, I collected these images," the triocon stated proudly, holding out a thin sheaf of visual data slips that Megatron snatched from his hand.

_Sidewinder. Scavenger. Talking. Sidewinder with his hand on Scavenger's shoulder. Scavenger opening Bonecrusher's locker, showing him the explosives inside, handling the samples._

Ah.

_Sidewinder reaching behind Scavenger's back, seizing a handful of promethium._

"Well done, Reflector," Megatron purred. "Well _done_."

 

* * *

 

Sidewinder awoke to find himself painfully dented but otherwise in good shape. Apparently, the Constructicons had lacked the strength to damage him severely.

"Assessment; faulty. Punishment detail; reassigned."

 _Soundwave. Blast._ Sidewinder sat up and looked around. He was still on the floor of Starscream's laboratory, between twin towers of rage that blocked the light from view; Megatron and Soundwave. Between them was a shadow, a black gash in reality as if Starscream's absence violated some unsuspected law of physics, so that his unfilled place mouthed hungrily upon Sidewinder, sucking and slurping and seeking to devour him, to swallow him into its emptiness, into the un-full-fill-able void between tyrant and technician.

"Don't bother getting up," Megatron growled to Sidewinder. The Seeker looked from leader to communicator; if anything, Soundwave looked angrier than Megatron. "Unless you can explain this." Megatron held out a visual data slip. Sidewinder saw himself in the act of stealing promethium from behind Scavenger's back.

"I - it's a fake!"

"Reflector; infallible visual recorder." An undertone charged Soundwave's monotone, a discord like the dark smear of mighty storm on the ocean's horizon. A black rage was upon him, the deep-brewed violence of the ocean thrashed to tempest.

"You disgust me, Sidewinder." Megatron, by contrast, was as contemptuous of life as a forest fire, optics smouldering like cinders in dry grass. "You must be wondering why you're not looking into the furnace chamber of my fusion cannon now. The answer is simple; if I put a hand around your throat now, I won't stop squeezing until your brainless head falls from your spineless neck, and _that_ wouldn't leave anything for Soundwave."

"Lord Megatron! Please, give me another chance!" Sidewinder begged. _Come on, there has to be something I can say to save myself!_ "Spare me!"

"Do you have a single support strut in your entire snivelling body?" Megatron sneered. "Or were you built a cringing coward?"

"But - " _C'mon, Sidewinder, what're the magic words? Starscream's talked himself out of deeper holes than this!_ "I - this is all a mistake!"

"I ought to kill you," Megatron continued bleakly. "Your little bomb almost led to the destruction of three good warriors, three loyal Decepticons. The only reason I intend to let you live is as an example to others. I don't want to destroy the Decepticon spirit of rebellion and treachery; only refine it into a more lethal and efficient form. Killing you would be as bad as demoting Starscream; a vital blow against the amoral fibre of our warrior race." He sneered. "Even if you grovel like a neutral, you are still a Decepticon, and your malevolence cannot go unrewarded. For your brave act of spite and rebellion, your life will be spared; but your blundering and gross stupidity must be corrected."

"Megatron! Please!" Sidewinder begged incoherently. The tyrant regarded him with contempt.

"There is no mercy here, Sidewinder, only the justice that is my law, the law of the Decepticons," Megatron replied, turning his back on the fallen Seeker. "If you wish to evade Soundwave's vengeance, you must either fight him or escape."

Sidewinder reached hopelessly after Megatron as the tyrant strode calmly towards the exit. Soundwave's foot came down on his back, crushing his cockpit against the floor. Sidewinder turned enough to see the communicator flexing his new hands in methodical anticipation.

"He's all yours, Soundwave," Megatron called back casually. "Remember to leave enough for the Constructicons to repair."

Soundwave filled the world: first, with sound, and then, with pain.

 

* * *

 

Starscream stood like a statue upon the rose-red mesa crest, bathed in the full glory of the ruby sunset as if washed in the blood of the world. His shadow stalked spider-leg-long across the stone plateau, and his optics reflected the downing splendour with their own furious brand of brightness. As the last rays of the setting sun kissed his forehead goodnight, Starscream raised his face to the distant stars. Deep in the cooling embrace of the desert, he awoke from the meanderings of his mind with sand in his intakes and a core full of loneliness.

Solitude strummed his tendons like long fingernails on guitar-strings, plucking chords of abandonment, and the stars joined in, a choir of bright voices attending in harmony; their numbers mocked his desolation. The desert was empty and uncaring, the sky clearer than conscience, and Starscream was alone.

The night sky accepted him as one of its own, a star loosed from heaven's vaults to flash free across the firmament, speeding across the slumbering land in bright curves and turns.

It was time to return.

 

* * *

 

Bonecrusher surveyed the wreck of Starscream's laboratory with a critical optic. "You'da thought Soundwave would've left a few more things intact," he said.

"Hah, doubt it!" Long Haul replied, lifting an overturned workstation to retrieve the still-twitching arm beneath it. "I've never seen him so torqued."

"Not surprising." Bonecrusher waded through splintered vessels and spattered chemicals towards a wide pool of brightness. "Stupid jet-boy almost smelted Rumble."

"Guess he got what was coming to him." Long Haul's voice was muffled as he bent to pick up a riven chunk of green-armoured shin.

"All that and a skip-load more," Bonecrusher grimaced, staring down at the remains of Sidewinder.

He lay on his back, surrounded by a spreading pool of energon and internal fluids. The pulped tangle of metal that had been his head twitched from side to side, and the ripped, twisted stumps of his limbs jerked in spasmodic pain.

"Huh. He's still functional," Bonecrusher grunted, pulling the Seeker into a sitting position. From deep in the crushed throat, Sidewinder gurgled a whimper. "Gonna need new arms ... new legs ... new wings."

"But we don't have any spares in his colours," Long Haul called from the other side of the room, where he held up a twisted helix of metal that had once been a leg.

"Yeah, well, he'll just have to suffer," Bonecrusher replied, admiring the way Soundwave's knuckles had left precise dents in Sidewinder's now-concave face. "Gonna need a whole new head module. Perhaps even a new _brain_." The Seeker made a bubbling noise and dribbled energon. "Get your wheeled aft over here, Long Haul! I ain't sittin' here until he goes cold."

"Why don't you carry him yourself?" the other Constructicon grumbled as he rejoined his fellow, laden with Sidewinder's broken, mangled limbs.

"Why don't you transform and we can get rid of this waste of metal?"

"Why don't you transform, and I'll hitch him to your aft and you can _drag_ him to repair bay?" Long Haul replied, dumping his burden on a workstation.

Bonecrusher looked down at the twitching mess in his arms. "I say we finish him off. Soundwave did a nasty enough job - we could say he was dead when we got here - all it'll take is few more breaks, _here_ and _here_ and -"

"Stop that!" Long Haul yelped, grabbing Bonecrusher's arm. "Megatron'll have our drive-shafts for decoration if he dies!" Bonecrusher paused, holding Sidewinder by the throat. He could feel the cables and wires and piping shift between his fingers as he allowed the Seeker's pulped head to roll from side to side. "Bonecrusher! The boss already stopped us destroying Sidewinder once today, he's gonna go ballistic if he catches us trying to do it again."

Without a word - unable to think of a word to express his disgust - Bonecrusher slammed the broken Seeker down on the floor and stood up, shouldering his gestaltmate aside. He stood fuming, his back to them both, trying to force his mind to shape his anger into a form, a substance, something solid he could shove out of his head and into words, but it all fell apart, leaving him mute with frustration. Then, saying nothing but shouting everything in a rough tangle of sound, he drove both his fists through the side of an overturned workstation. Tearing himself free, he swung the workstation over his head, ripping out its last connections, and hurled it across the room.

"Finished?" Long Haul asked, still with one arm raised protectively over his head. Bonecrusher nodded, calmer. His gestalt-mate rose from his crouch. "Starscream is gonna hit the roof when he sees this place."

"Let him," Bonecrusher snapped. Long Haul transformed, allowing Bonecrusher to unceremoniously drop Sidewinder's battered hulk into his berth. "He can clean up for himself for once."

"Eh, this is Soundwave's mess," Long Haul objected as his comrade kicked wreckage out of his way.

"Soundwave made the mess," Bonecrusher replied irritably, "but it's all Starscream's fault. I don't know how, but this is _all_ Starscream's fault."

 

* * *

 

Light came back slowly; sound followed in a sudden rush. Sidewinder re-awoke to the world outside the tight shell of senselessness into which Soundwave had battered him. He could feel the over-tight connections and cold, stiff joints of his new limbs, and the sharp scraping discomfort from each part of his newly assembled head-module. A dozen nagging pains nibbled on his sensor relays, and Sidewinder thought how nice it would be just to sink back into that warm, dim place for a while.

"You're finished. Get up and get out," rasped a voice.

Sidewinder reluctantly sat up, saw himself and wailed, "What have you _done_ to me?"

His left leg was faded yellow. His right leg was dull turquoise. His right arm was an alarming shade of lilac, and his left arm was an even uglier orange. Like his olive-drab and maroon wings, they were spare parts from defunct drone warriors.

"I'd call it an improvement," Hook sneered. "Your appearance now matches your behaviour: utterly ridiculous."

"I - I'm a _mess_!" Sidewinder gaped in horror at his ruined colour scheme. "I'm ... I have pieces of other people all over me!" He turned on the two Constructicons with a growl. "Repaint me!"

Hook and Scrapper looked at each other.

"I'm not touching him with a beryllium barge-pole, let alone a picotron programmer," Hook stated. Scrapper shrugged.

"You," he growled at Sidewinder, pointing to a half-finished side-room. "In there. Now."

Inside, Scrapper sat him down forcibly on a non-functional repair plinth. "We only fixed you for one reason," he snarled. "Because Megatron ordered us to. Otherwise, I'd have let Bonecrusher and Long Haul stomp what was left of you into the floor." He grabbed Sidewinder by his jaw, wrenching his face around; the Seeker winced. "You disgust me. Megatron was angry enough to nearly smelt Scavenger on the spot earlier, and now we are indebted to Reflector for saving his life." He squeezed Sidewinder's chin, bending the metal; the Seeker tried to pry his strong fingers away. "We don't like that, and we don't like _you_ , Sidewinder. We are the Constructicons. We think as one, act as one, hate as one. Remember that well."

"I'll remember you're a bunch of antagonistic jumped-up muckrakers," Sidewinder spat, shoving himself to his feet in order to look down on Scrapper. "Can't you keep your people in line, Scrapper?"

The foremech did not back down; instead, he held his ground, growling, "Get out. You've caused enough trouble in here today."

"Your duty is to repair me!"

"Shove it up your afterburner, flyboy, and come back when you've got some sense in that empty head of yours!" Scrapper shoved Sidewinder towards the door; he was stronger than he looked. Sidewinder backed out, keeping his optics locked on Scrapper, arm turrets slowly powering up.

"Very brave of you," Hook observed dryly, coming around from behind his workstation. "Assaulting someone willing to repair you, after what you have tried to do to us."

"Yes, so very courageous," sneered a voice behind him. Sidewinder turned to see the three Constructicons who had attacked him standing protectively around a badly shaken Scavenger.

It occurred to him, all of a sudden, that there were six Constructicons, not - as he had thought - five.

"This is all a mistake," Sidewinder hissed, pointing at Scavenger. "All because of _his_ lies." Only the one he accused looked upset; the others were unanimously angry. Sidewinder continued backing away, arm turrets aimed at whoever came closest as they herded him out of the repair bay and into Cargo Bay #2 - into the domain of the Constructicons.

"You wretched quisling," Hook declaimed as the door sealed behind them. "You impugn Scavenger with your own lies."

"I am innocent!"

"You're scrap metal walking!" Bonecrusher retorted, picking up a pry-bar and hefting it eagerly.

"I don't care what you think of me! I am Sidewinder, Air Commander of the Decepticons, and I demand to know what this so-called _devastating_ secret of the Constructicons is!" It seemed his attempt at misdirection had succeeded; the six stopped their wolf-pack circling and stared at one another in amazement.

"He ... doesn't know?" Hook mused.

"He's even stupider than we thought!" Mixmaster cackled.

"Perhaps we should show you," Scrapper crowed, and Sidewinder prickled at the foremech's pleased tone. "Constructicons - _merge_!"

Limb to limb, head to heel, folding and unfolding, they disappeared into the body of a giant who rose like thunder upon the horizon, great as a city walled with bronze, strong as its army bearing spears, terrible as the slaughter they made and enduring as the legend of their war. His fists were as boulders from a mountain of iron, his shoulders broad as those of Atlas, and his face was stern and grim.

" _I_ am _Devastator_!" the gestalt roared. "No one will take me apart!" The vast optic band fixed its gaze upon him, gleaming with hatred, and the enormous hands spread in grasping rage.

It was too much. Sidewinder broke and ran.

 

* * *

 

Skywarp nimbly stepped back as a multi-coloured jet that was probably Sidewinder hurtled past, blind with panic. Soundwave made no such evasion, and the Seeker rebounded off his solid shoulder, ricocheted aside and sprinted away.

"What spooked him?" Skywarp wondered aloud. Soundwave spared the fleeing Seeker a moment's further glance.

"Devastator," the communicator droned, then pressed the button on his shoulder. "Buzzsaw; eject. Operation; retrieval." The reconnaissance raptor took off down the corridor after the panicking jet with an eager shriek.

"That bad, huh?" Skywarp asked, as they continued on towards the control centre.

"He has been forced to perceive the unbelievable," Soundwave replied soberly. "The existence of something greater than his own failings."

"Soundwave, has anyone ever told you you've got the meanest sense of humour?"

Soundwave did not reply, but Skywarp thought that, for an instant, he saw a glitter of amusement in the blank visor. He pondered that, as much as he dared, as they headed for the command chamber.

Their leader stood with his back to them, waiting for all to assemble. Megatron's foul temper still smouldered, seething fervidly within his furnace heart, needing little stoking for vivid eruption. Skywarp insinuated himself slightly behind Soundwave, out of the line of fire. Minutes passed, squeezing through the gaps in the tension-barred atmosphere. The Constructicons arrived in a state of co-in-ordinate cheer that confirmed to Skywarp that Soundwave had been right about them forming Devastator; their presence allowed Skywarp to stop hiding behind the communicator and simply take a position at the back of the crowd, nice and close to the door. Thundercracker soon appeared at a run, making a half-excuse about the bilge doors jamming _again_.

Megatron raised his head; his optics glowed with a furious light. "Where is Sidewinder?" he hissed.

"Pump room, Tower #4," Soundwave reported. "Buzzsaw; retrieving."

"Tell him to hurry up! No, wait!" The tyrant turned fully towards them, optics aglitter with a mixture of spite and despite Skywarp had rarely seen before. "Skywarp: _bring_ Sidewinder here, as quickly as you can." The malicious undertone in his voice left no doubt as to what was being ordered. Skywarp threw a light salute, and teleported.

 

* * *

 

Sidewinder had tucked himself under a rack of water pipes, curled up in a defensive crouch, arms folded over his head. Buzzsaw pecked irritably at his forearms, cawing in frustration. Skywarp shook his head in disbelief, filing the memory to be shared with Thundercracker at a later date. His wingmate would get a definite kick out of seeing his hated non-sibling cowering like a neutral from the fearsome wrath of puny little Buzzsaw.

"Come on," he snickered, grabbing Sidewinder by the elbows and dragging him out into the open, trying to pull him upright. "You're wanted. Duty calls."

"Leave me alone!" Sidewinder moaned, sagging in Skywarp's hands.

"Ahh, get back in formation." Skywarp kicked his commander in the hip. "Look at you, shaking like a minibot just because of big bad Devastator. For Cybertron's sake!" He dropped Sidewinder. "You really are pathetic, Sidewinder. Megatron gave you an opportunity half the fleet would kill for, and you've blown it completely." Skywarp crouched down, prodding Sidewinder in the shoulder. "You could've had it all, Sidewinder ... second in command of the Decepticon Battle Fleet, mighty tyrant of the firmament ... and it's slipped through your fingers."

Sidewinder raised his head enough to look at Skywarp. "I didn't know," he gasped. "I didn't know they were a gestalt. I didn't _realise_."

"You wanna know what I think?" Skywarp cocked his head to one side. Sidewinder shrugged in open-mouthed bafflement. "I think you didn't realise they were a gestalt because you didn't _want_ to believe it, because it made things so much easier for you." Skywarp chuckled. "Like Megatron says; you're an _idiot_ , Sidewinder." He hauled the commander to his feet. "Now, stand absolutely still, if you don't want to end up missing a wing." Buzzsaw, realising Skywarp's intentions, launched himself into the air, transforming and magnetically clamping himself to Skywarp's shoulder.

"What're you doing?" Sidewinder asked, wide-opticed.

"Just a little lesson in how to get from A to B with the least amount of hassle," Skywarp grinned, clasped his hands around Sidewinder's forearms, and teleported.

 

* * *

 

Sidewinder fell backwards in shock. The world revolved crazily, autogyros insisting that he was being spun in two different directions at once.

"Get up, you miserable excuse for a target," snarled a voice like the crack of doom. Stabilisers on strike and optics playing tricks on him, Sidewinder struggled to stand. If Skywarp hadn't still been holding his arms, he would have fallen completely. "Now we're all present ..." Megatron began his briefing without hesitation, outlining a short but simple plan. He would lead the Seekers and Infocons in locating and recovering the missing Insecticons. The Constructicons, he ordered, would return to the temporary base, continuing their preparatory work for the strength transfer machine. Sidewinder absorbed as much of it as he could, but all suggestion of greater implication slipped through the cracks in his mind.

The flight cleared the dizzy fog, and his gyrostabilisers no longer rolled insanely at the slightest movement. He followed his wingmen in silence; no longer did he dare take the point of their arrow, but instead trailed behind, once again the artillery jet tailing the lighter fighters. The sky was leaden, cloud-brows frowning in sullen gloom.

 _Is this how it will end?_ he wondered. _I slowly fade into obscurity, the shamed third part of a leaderless wing? Or is there another chance for me? Has Megatron spared my life to let me find another opportunity to prove myself?_

The Decepticon flight split up. Megatron and Soundwave dove down to the plateau of a high mesa, wherefrom they could observe and scan for the Insecticons, whom the long-range sensors of the base indicated were in the area.

 _That must be it,_ Sidewinder reasoned, as his wing rose higher. _This time, I won't listen to Soundwave. I'll prove I'm every bit as good as Starscream ever was!_

"Sidewinder, we have a stranger on our three," Thundercracker reported suddenly. Startled alert, Sidewinder checked his readings.

_Starscream!_

There was a jet flying parallel to their course, holding a steady Mach 1 a mile and a half off Skywarp's three o'clock. It glimmered softly in the hands of the clouds, a pale ghost-plane edged with sunset. Condensation streamed from sleek wingtips in dewy ribbons, bright red armour muted into roseate hints, white contrail threading tight stitches through the gunmetal cumulus.

The jet bore Autobot markings.

Brilliance flickered on sharp wing-edges like lightning amongst glowering clouds; Sidewinder's fuel pounded through hot engines like the rumble of thunder, spurring him to action. _When I defeat Starscream, Megatron will see I am superior to these idiots and relics!_

"We'll get out of your way," Thundercracker sneered. "I guess you and Starscream will want a little time to get to know each other."

The two warriors dove away, pealing off like raindrops from polished armour. Sidewinder altered course to intercept the exile.

_This is my chance - at last, my chance!_

Sidewinder's target lock snapped together in a moment of clarity. Six of the missiles attached to his wings belched into life, clicked free and shot forwards with murderous eagerness. Through some subconscious effort, Sidewinder failed to realise he had just fired on a superior officer who had, so far, done nothing more than share his airspace.

Starscream wove lazily though the air, missiles chasing his tail. Sidewinder followed eagerly to see what the mighty ex-Air Commander would do. The exile banked right and dove steeply; not so steeply, though, that both the missiles and their launcher, hanging behind, were hard-pressed to follow him. Starscream sliced into a deep canyon, jinking casually between slithery curving walls of red stone. With a lazy roll, he circumvented a freestanding column of rock and then ripped up and out of the canyon. The missiles, bereft of such accurate handling, failed explosively to avoid it.

The tower toppled, a finger of accusation slowly pointing down towards Sidewinder, who scrambled to avoid it, narrowly evading the crashing rock. He dragged himself out of the canyon under the weight of gravity. Starscream darted over his back, and Sidewinder heard thin, cruel laughter. He realised that he still wore his mismatched colours and felt ridiculous, then angry.

Spurred by pride, Sidewinder chased the exile high into the sky.

 _[Traitor!]_ Sidewinder broadcast. _[Face your successor and die!]_

Thunder roared upon the airwaves - a piercing war-scream that nearly split his audio receptors, a jagged rip of sound that punctured his sensorum. Starscream's wordless shriek shot though him like a premonition, followed instantly by twin lances of pain as lightning struck from on high. Sidewinder staggered in flight as Starscream's plasma blasts pierced his wings, puncturing his wings where amethyst blazons had glittered. Wobbling to regain stability, Sidewinder missed his chance to fire as Starscream dove past him. The Air Commander rolled lazily on his back, mocking Sidewinder with a flash of his underside and a shrieking cackle.

Purging echoes of engine-thunder from his half-deafened audios, Sidewinder gave chase, diving towards the red land below. Turbulence dragging at his missile racks and whistling through the holes in his wings, he gave as much thrust as he dared and aimed his carbines at the shining tailfins, the fiery tail that turned and leapt before him. Down into shadowy canyons he followed, never nearing even clipping a lightning wing. Through narrow arroyo and tight gorge they arrowed, where dry brush rattled at their passing and Starscream's taunts reverberated in a hundred laughing echoes. Sidewinder's turbines belched spatters of glass as sand shaken from high cliffs by their rumbling engines blew like rain upon him.

Turning against gravity, Starscream rose in a perfect vertical line towards the Sun and, with a great burst of power, accelerated into the ether. Sidewinder climbed after him, doggedly dragging his broken wings after his fleeter opponent. Gaining level flight, he looked for his opponent and found him not.

 _[Are those missiles too heavy for you?]_ Starscream shrieked, his voice tearing at Sidewinder's nerve; a voice forged from ripped metal and screams, a voice that crooned cruelty from invisible heights - the voice of lightning, cleaving the clouds as if to tear open the sky and let the murderous wrath-light of the Sun itself reach down and smite him to the ground. _[Here, let me lighten your load!]_

Sidewinder jerked as lightning leapt from behind, slicing cleanly through wing-racks and sending missiles, rack and all plunging earthwards. He wove desperately, trying to shake the storm off his tail, but to no avail. Lightning struck twice, thrice, and his tailfins scattered to the four winds.

 _He's playing with me,_ Sidewinder realised in panic, as Starscream shot off his vertical stabilisers. _Just like Megatron did. He's using me, he's -_

_He's making a fool of me!_

In that moment of realisation and fear, he lost track of Starscream, and was suddenly alone in the sky.

 _Where'd he go?_ A faint measure of hope rose in him. _Did he ... did he run away?_

From the blackest heart of the storm, Starscream came down like a thunderbolt, and Sidewinder felt the fear of prey when the eagle's shadow falls upon its back. He felt something cold and hard bite into him, just behind the canopy, and he realised he was grappled.

Starscream's afterburners roared fire as hot as wrath.

Sidewinder shrieked in horror as the Air Commander accelerated up through the walls of sound, dragging him along like a pull-toy. All pretence of aerial grace destroyed, he bounced and swung on the end of the grappling chain, gyrating madly.

 _[Oh Primus no!]_ Sidewinder screamed again as Starscream dove for the ground, dashing through the canyons. Wings buckled and snapped away as he pounded and pelted against rocks that bit and splintered his body, intakes tossed aside like shrapnel. His canopy shattered in a burst of sunlight splinters. He howled as he saw a flat-topped mesa approaching at speed - not just any mesa, but Megatron's observation position.

Starscream let go at the perfect moment, elegantly vaulting away as he transformed from exile into champion. Sidewinder, already beyond hope, smashed into the umber ground, nosecone buckling like tinfoil as he ploughed a wavy furrow through the red dirt.

Sidewinder ground to an agonised halt, stamped into stillness by Megatron's heavy foot; his back crumpled and was crushed by the weight of the tyrant's displeasure. Megatron gave him a look that mingled disgust with a certain bitter measure of fatalistic fortitude. Before Sidewinder had a chance to analyse the look, Starscream touched down lightly, and immediately the tyrant and the champion lanced hot wires of tension through the air as target locks dead-centred in their vision. Sidewinder glanced at Soundwave. The communications officer was kneeling by him, neutrally inspecting his damages, or at least pretending to. Sidewinder noted that Soundwave's gun was already in his hand, and his finger rested upon its trigger-guard.

Long moments dragged themselves by, disembowelled by the splinter-edge of anger crackling from silver frame to silver frame. Finally, Megatron crushed the silence.

"Why are you painted like an Autobot? Have you finally betrayed not only me but the entire Decepticon cause?"

Sidewinder saw Soundwave's finger rest upon the trigger of his blaster.

"Perhaps you should ask my _replacement_ ," replied the imperious tone of the aerial victor. "After all, it was he who fired on me."

"He can explain himself later. For now ..." Megatron's voice dropped into ominous threat.

Starscream laughed, cruel, carefree and superior. "A little misdirection, Megatron! Perhaps if you'd been paying attention to the humans recently, you'd have noticed that they're not on the best of terms with the Autobots right now. A small push in the right direction and the Autobots will lose their energy supplies."

"Explain yourself!" Megatron barked, and Sidewinder recognised with a sinking feeling a hint of interest in his tone.

"With my Insecticons -"

"So they _are_ your work!"

"Oh, yes! After all, who else could design such master-works of destruction and havoc?" Starscream bridled at Megatron's snort of derision. "Don't laugh! You ordered me to build them! Or don't you recognise the Operation: Exodus infiltration team?"

"Get on with it," Megatron snapped.

"With my Insecticons, I planned to openly pass a few human military stations, clearly displaying Autobot markings. The humans would instantly believe that I was the white jet seen in Bali and that the Insecticons were in fact brand new Autobots. Not only would the Autobots be revealed as having broken their little treaty by travelling to Bali, but also their fruitless attempts to find the victims of the so-called kidnapper-Decepticon - to wit, myself, now believed to be an Autobot - will look like attempts to cover up for their own inhumane actions!"

"And?" Megatron asked, goading Starscream towards revealing the fullness of his plan.

"The humans will instantly become hostile towards the Autobots, and refuse to supply energy and materials. With suitable manipulation, we can persuade the humans to declare war on the Autobots - a war the Autobots will refuse to fight! Whilst they cower in the Ark, dithering over the righteousness of defending themselves against a swarm of fleshlings with primitive weaponry, the Autobots will grow weaker and weaker from lack of energon and supplies, leaving them gloriously vulnerable to a swift, decisive strike!" Starscream's optics narrowed and his mouth thinned in an expression more sneer than smile. "Surely you can appreciate the irony in having the Autobots brought down by the organic pests they're so eager to protect!"

"Not a bad plan, Starscream, it might just work." Megatron's tone, veined with hints of pride, was not lost on the preening silver Seeker. Sidewinder tasted the wormwood tang of jealousy and felt even more of a clumsy fool than before. "What have you done with the humans you took?"

"I disassembled them for detailed study and preserved the remains in the usual fashion."

"Excellent! They will be the perfect material for incriminating the Autobots. Now, where are the Insecticons?"

"I lost track of them when that idiot shot at me." Spat with disgust, the barbed words lodged in Sidewinder's ego like a poisoned arrow.

"Blast! Soundwave, locate the Insecticons."

The communicator left his side to scan the airspace with his powerful sensors. "Insecticons are fifty miles occidensal-boreal ... attacking a human military station."

Megatron and Starscream exchanged irate looks.

"I should have realised they were your work sooner," Megatron rumbled. "They're as disobedient as their creator."

"Blame him!" Starscream shrieked, pointing at Sidewinder. "This is _his_ fault."

"Yes," Megatron mused. "Whatever are we going to do with you now, Sidewinder?"


	5. Epilogue

 

**Epilogue**

_Thou art no more an angel filled_

  _With light, but a leech to be abhorred_

  _And thou shalt suffer my burning will_    
  
---  
  
Cradle of Filth, _An Enemy Led The Tempest_  
  
 

"Diplomatic case, eh?"

"Just open it, Deadlift."

"Yes, boss."

In the stifling darkness of the packing crate, immured in the sweltering panic that had crushed him in its embrace for astrocycles without end, jolted to stupidity and back again, Sidewinder became faintly aware of voices and heat. Molten light oozed in under the lid of his coffin, and metal screamed in riven pain. Sidewinder saw more heat than light. His optics were just as damaged as the rest of his oozing, broken body, and he feared that the cutting torch would ignite the thin slurry of energon and internal fluids in which he lay. He kept his optics tightly shielded against the spitting heat, praying silently that he would not burn to death in a metal box, bound tight in a frightening space.

When they welded him in, he had screamed, shrieking and sobbing in tight embrace of claustrophobia, and beaten at the walls of his prison until his hands broke. Then, in terror, he had listened for any sound, and finally, when the weight of the close darkness filled the crate and smothered him, crushed him, choked him and buried him, he had fallen insensate into nightmares, where the black absence of Starscream mocked his foolishness and filled his head with terrors.

Finally, when the heat around his head had grown almost unbearable, the lid came away with a tearing, and cool air rushed in; cool air, scented with complex trace elements and energon. It was the air of Cybertron.

Sidewinder's optics slowly blurred into focus. Looming directly over him, filling his vision like the mid-evening sky, was a form half-hidden in curving wings, optics glimmering balefully in the shadows beneath the chevron brow of a tall flanged helm. The room was unusually dark - or were his optics malfunctioning? The two mechanisms that had disinterred him now put the lid of his coffin to one side and left; left him alone with this being, this thing with remorseless optics.

"Are you going to kill me?" he croaked as he sat up. His vocal synthesiser, like all his systems, was malfunctioning from stasis and damage.

"No," replied the winged one, and his voice was the rustle of silk through the eye of a needle. "You are not here to die."

"Then who are you?"

"You are in no position to ask questions," the other replied, his sotto voice smoothing command into fact.

"What are my orders?"

"Your orders? You have no orders. You no longer exist." The other produced a single-use data-pad from the curve of his wings. " _My_ orders are specific. The judgement of the Decepticon High Command found you guilty of attacking a superior officer under camouflage. You are to be quarantined from all contact until the incident has been forgotten. A posting of some three decavorns is stipulated; double that is recommended." The wings shifted slightly, opening and closing around the shadowy body; blue on blue, shades of twilight and concealment, highlights of spite-green. "By their order, you are not to be physically altered." Sidewinder recognised that as a euphemism for 'no beating the prisoner.' "By specific order of Megatron, you are not to be terminated or directly punished for your actions. After all -" The twilight one's silken tone ruffled from the susurration of a silken scarf playfully coiling about a throat to the immediate sharpness of a tightening garrotte. "You _did_ fire on a jet of questionable identity bearing Autobot markings." A slight hint of a smile tinted his thin mouth; the silken tone tightened about Sidewinder's throat in refined maleficence. "By specific order of Starscream, you are placed at my disposal."

"Who are you?" Sidewinder asked in fear, for it seemed the terrible black absence filled the broad shadow of the twilight one, as if it were a part of his being.

"Dreadmoon, Monitor of Sector Six."

"I will serve you with all my abilities," Sidewinder croaked, knowing that he was delivered into the coldly capable hands of a mechanism whom dark whispers named as one of Starscream's favourites.

"Begin by answering this question," Dreadmoon lead him, as the ligature twisted another secret tighter. "Did you fire on Starscream?"

"I - what? You read the report!"

"I did. Did you fire on Starscream? Deliberately, knowing whom he was, knowing whom you were shooting at? Did you fire at an unidentified enemy jet, or did you fire on Starscream?"

"You can't interrogate me! I'm -"

"Quarantined from all contact and under my direct command. Did you fire on Starscream?"

Sidewinder managed a thin laugh, spreading his hands in supplication. "Look, this has been a terrible misunderstanding. I'm sure, if you just contact Earth, you'll find that everything has blown over and I'm free to leave."

Dreadmoon remained still as stone. "Did you fire on Starscream?" he repeated.

"Look, it was a mistake!"

"Did you fire on Starscream?" The garrotte voice cut deep into Sidewinder's throat, strangling the lie and forcing out the truth.

"Yes! All right, I fired at him! I tried to kill him, and I failed!"

The acidity of Dreadmoon's expression could have etched armour. Sidewinder crashed back into his coffin as the Sector Monitor stepped on his chest, forcing him back down into the dark confines of his coffin-crate. Sidewinder felt the black absence grip him with claustrophobia, and he clawed the Monitor with broken fingers, leaving glowing scrabbles upon his unmarred armour. Dreadmoon leaned over, face splitting into the kind of coldly malign smile that such a restrained being keeps in formaldehyde for special occasions.

"Starscream has given you to me," whispered the evening sky, twin suns burning on the horizon. His smile was sharp and bright as midwinter, his voice soft as corded silk bound around a strangled throat.

"You are not here to die, Sidewinder. You are here to be buried alive."

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks to my beta readers - RowenaTM, Skyblaze, Razorpack, Wayward, Pitten [Queen of Commas!] and especially Lunatron [who slogged through the whole thing four times over] - and also to Wayward for the loan of Dreadmoon.
> 
> This fic is reposted in its original 2003 version. My main reason for writing this fic was that I got sick of seeing Starscream written as an ineffectual, whimpering nitwit. So I took all the depictions of Starscream that I thought were wrong and rolled them into one, and that one I named Sidewinder. Of course, characters being characters, Sidewinder did develop a little personality of his own after a while.


End file.
